Read the excerpt from "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Achebe directly quotes Conrad’s descriptions o
f a Congolese woman and a European woman, respectively. Towards the end of the story Conrad lavishes a whole page quite unexpectedly on an African woman who has obviously been some kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz and now presides (if I may be permitted a little liberty) like a formidable mystery over the inexorable imminence of his departure:
She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent. . . . She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. . . .
She came forward all in black with a pale head, floating toward me in the dusk. She was in mourning . . . She took both my hands in hers and murmured, "I had heard you were coming.". . . She had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering.
How does Achebe support his claim that Heart of Darkness contains racist elements?
