TWO VISIONS IN HEART of DARKNESS

      When I read Edward Said’s essay about Heart of Darkness, I realised that Said not only

mentions his critic about the novel but also we can see Conrad through Said’s eyes. Said sees

him differently than the other colonial writers of his time because he has been self-conscious of his actions and these has been expressed through Marlow. In Conrad’s time, independence was for whites and Europeans, while oppression and slavery was for those considered inferior.

     Said sees this novel as an imperialist text because he says that “politics and aesthetics are, so to speak, imperialist.” It is a way of suggesting that Conrad’s style reflects his political philosophy, but I do not agree with Said for I think that Conrad wanted to show how imperialism works and he has been very realistic while describing the environment, the natives and the Europeans, for example: “When one has got to make correct entries,  one comes to hate those savages- hate them to the death.” (pg.47) The clerk says this to Marlow, when they encounter for the first time. Here we see the Europeans feelings towards the natives. Also we can see how the Europeans treat them. “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. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.” This passage is a good example of the treatments of the natives. Nobody cares if when they die. They are treated like animals. Marlow describes the behaviours as the natives as “they howled and leaped, spun, and made horrid faces.” These passages that I have quoted seems to me very realistic and that is why I do not agree that is an imperialist text. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is all about Europe’s brutal mission to colonize the dark world.

      In his essay, Said has made two arguments. The first one is that even though the Europeans have withdrew from Africa and Asia, they still retained rule over the markets, morals, and education in these places and I agree with Said. We can still encounter many traces of Europeans in these countries, although they seemed to left their colonies. Now they say that we are just helping them to develop. The second argument claims that imperialism was something for the 19^th century and not something that would continue even in the post-colonial world. This argument also says that imperialism, like everything else in the world, had its time of popularity and it eventually passed. As I stated before now developed countries colonize the countries they want by saying we are helping them developing themselves. This is just a modern word for imperialism and so they continue to exploit these countries according to their benefits.

       In Argumentum apologiae Las Casas tries to prove why the Amerindians are not barbarians, but before that we have to understand what Aristotle means by “barbarian” when he used that word. In the first book of Politics he defines barbarian as natural slaves.

However, in the third book he says that barbarians are those, who are not greek.

       Las Casas makes his argument by saying that the term barbarian can be examined in four types. The first one applies to individualism. The second type is about language because according to Las Casas, those who can communicate cannot be classified as barbarians and when you have a language you are social, but also written word is important because it makes you progress and this shows your acess to knowledge. As the Amerindians had no written texts, they were regarded as barbarians, but the chieftains did not need any written law in order to rule because they guided them “like elder relatives and the fathers of families”. Thirdly, Las Casas ays that if someone is impious, perverse, savage, ferocious, slow witted and alien to all reason than this person is barbarious because they cannot live in a society and if they do, they will be a hazard to their enviroment. The final category of barbarian is described as to non-Chriatians. Again the Amerindians cannot be described as barbarians because to be a Christian does not mean that you are civil as in the example of  “The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account”. There the Chriatian amde a massacre.

     In my opinion these four categories are true because if even one of these criterias do not suit you, you cannot be labbeld as a barbarian and the Amerindians had their own life style, cities, rules laws etc. when we think back, we will realize that the Europeans used to be like the Amerindians because they ,too, sacrified humans even though they call it barbarism, but when they slaughter people that is normal. Also they did not have any written texts or any monotheist religion.

THE DEVASTATION OF THE INDİES

When I read “The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account” by Bartolome de las Casas, I got horriefied. What the Spaniards did is a genocide of the Indies and these people call themselves Chriatians. In the Ten Commandments it is clearly stated that you shall not kill but what did this people do, they tortured them before killing. From more than three million people just two hundred remained. The raeson for killing these people is not because the Indies did wrong to the Spaniards, but because of their being greedy. They wanted their lands, their foods, their gold, and their wives. In the article on page six, it is described, how the Spaniards killed the Indians. They killed everyone: men, women, children, babies, the olds etc. they had no mercy.They dismembered and cut them into pieces which is barbarous. What is strange to me is that these people went to the churces, prayed, confessed their sins to the priest, and prayed for mercy, but these people were also able to kill for God’s sake. In my opnion, they treated animals better than these people. They also converted these people into Christians. How did they believe that the Indians would believe in their religion after witnessing their crulty their barbarity.

 I also want to make a reference to Moliere’s “Of Cannibals.” On page six and seven it is descriebed that what the so-called cannibals do with  their prisoners. First of all, they feed them very good and then they invite their friends to eat the prisoner. To eat a person is abnormal to us, but what the Spaniards did with the Indies is unhumanly. They boiled the babies or drowned them in the rivers and burned the people and this is not cannibalism for them. I think we should be careful about using the word cannibal and barbarian because as we can see here the cannibals are the Spaniards.