Representation of Africa in "Things Fall Apart" and "Heart of Darkness"

1. Representation of Africa in “Heart of Darkness”
and “Things Fall apart”
Name: Jinal B. Parmar
Roll no:11
Paper no:14 “The African Literature”
M. A. Semester: 4
Year: 2015
PG Enrolment no.: 13101025
Email ID: jinal.parmar989883@gmail.com
Submitted to: Department of English
Smt. S. B. Gardi
M. K. Bhavnagar University
Dt:11th March 2015

2. Things Fall
Apart Heart of
Darkness

3. Introduction of the writer
Joseph Conrad
Chinua Achebe

4. Introduction of the writer
“Each of my books is different.
Deliberately... I wanted to create my
society, my people, in their fullness”

5. Introduction of the novel
• Story follows white
man and journey
through Africa
• Marlow is narrator of
the story
• Imperialism is at the
center of the novel

6. Introduction of the novel
• Modern African novel in
English
• Story takes place in Africa
during the time of Colonialism
• Story focused on the character
Okonkwo
• His experience in colonization
Africa
• Talks about Ibo culture
• Title of the novel comes from a
line in W. B. Yeats' poem "The
Second Coming"

7. Both novels
Heart of Darkness Things fall Apart
 Joseph Conrad
 Published in 1899
 Image of Late 19th
century Africa
 Africans as “Savages”
 Presented as Dark
image of Africa
 Chinua Achebe
 Published in 1958
 Image of mid 20th
century Africa
 Igbo Culture
 presented the real
picture of Africa

8. Things Fall
Apart
Heart of
Darkness

9. Both novels
Heart of Darkness Things fall Apart
 Achebe claims that the
image of Africa which is
portrayed in Heart of Darkness
is not because of African
people’s lack of awareness and
knowledge but it’s a result of
colonialism
 seen African as ANIMALISTIC
 Art of conversation
 structured and civilized
society

10. Representation of Women
“When the British came to Ibo land, for
instance, at the beginning of the 20th
century, and defeated the men in pitched
battles in different places, and set up their
administrations, the men surrendered.
And it was the women who led the first
revolt”
-Chinua Achebe
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult task,
since it consists principally in dealing with
men”
-Joseph Conrad

11.  “Africa as other world”
 Accuses Joseph Conrad
of being "a thoroughgoing
racist" for depicting Africa
as "the other world”
 “Antithesis of Europe
and there of civilization”
 Considered as racist

12.  Said says that “Heart of
Darkness works so
effectively because its
politics and aesthetics are,
so to speak, imperialist,
which in the closing years of
the nineteenth century
seemed to be at the same
time an aesthetic, politics
and even epistemology
inevitable an unavoidable”
 The idea of “OTHER” and
“US”

13. JanMohammed states,
“Colonial literature is an exploration of a
world at the boundaries of civilization; a world
that has not been domesticated by European
signification." It is a world perceived as
"uncontrollable, chaotic, unattainable, and
ultimately evil."

14. Thank you..