Edexcel: Paper 2: Postcolonial paired text
Present-day readers of Heart of Darkness inevitably come to Joseph Conrad’s critique of imperial exploitation with a postcolonial perspective. But when Conrad wrote this short novel, imperialism was in its heyday. In the ‘scramble for Africa’ and its riches, several European powers, including Great Britain, France and Belgium, were carving up the continent for their own benefits. Racism justified this exploitation. Non-European people were seen as inferior, and as ‘other’, yet the word ‘racism’ did not exist until four years after Heart of Darkness was completed. Though Conrad is plainly appalled by the worst of imperial despotism and the shabby justifications for it, he cannot entirely escape the prevailing attitudes of his time.
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