Heart of Darkness

In the book, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad uses imagery and social setting to portray the acts of dehumanization by the white men who lord power over the African people.  

Conrad describes how the African slaves are overworked until they are unable to continue working.  They are literally worked to death.  In this social setting the white people viewed the treatment toward Africans as perfectly normal.  The white men have a firmly held conviction that they are above or superior to the Africans.  “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.” (Conrad 83)  Throughout this quote Conrad uses imagery to show that the slaves are only considered as working objects by the white people.   The white men have an inhumane attitude toward the Africans because they don’t consider the basic human needs of water, food, and rest as vital. The slaves are describes as “clinging to the earth” this means they are practically lifeless and are struggling to survive.  They are hanging on to whatever life they have left.  The pain relates to the actual physical pain of hunger, heat, and dehydration.  They may have felt abandoned by any kind of spiritual “god” they believed in.  The attitude of despair is based on the slave’s feeling of hopelessness and no reason to live.  This quote shows how weak and powerless the slaves feel. The whites look down on the Africans and considered them a lower social class. The whites use their threatening power to control the Africans because the whites recognize that they have the ability to physically control others with acts of violence. The slaves are dehumanized and were are not treated humanely.  The slaves are not valued as people but only as a replaceable workforce.