Moral Conditions for Genocide in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness1, The

College Literature, Winter 2005 by Lackey, Michael

Conrad read "Bloody Niggers," which he considered "very good, very telling" (1969, 89). However, he did have some objections. The essay lacks subtlety, and as a consequence, Graham ends up preaching to the converted. To make the essay more poignant and more effective, Conrad encourages Graham to hold his thoughts back, letting them gather "together to form a solid and penetrating phalanx" so that they could become "perhaps victorious" (1986, 2:70).10 Put differently, to reach an audience that might not be critical of theology or imperialism, Conrad urges Graham to write more cogently.

"Bloody Niggers" certainly helped Conrad explain the theological mentality that justified "exterminating whole tribes of" Africans, or, as Kurtz puts it, to "[e]xterminate all the brutes! "What makes Heart of Darkness more effective, however, is Conrad's aesthetic control, his ability to frame the issues within a more comprehensive context and to maximize the emotional impact on his reader. The downside of Conrad's call for subtlety is that his "idea" could so easily be lost upon his reader. In fact, Conrad mentions this problem in a letter to Graham. After Graham read the first installment of the novella which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899, Conrad told Graham that "the idea [of the novella] is so wrapped up in secondary notions that You-even You!-may miss it" (1969, 116). Here we return to Graham as the ideal reader of Conrad's texts. If Graham, who is Conrad's ideal reader ("I always thought that He will understand"), could potentially miss the "idea" of the novella, how much more apt is the average reader to miss it? Conrad's subtlety has, no doubt, been the occasion for much interpretive ambiguity. But if we can specify what it is about Graham that makes him Conrad's ideal reader, then we might be more strategically positioned to interpret the "idea" of Heart of Darkness. For the sake of clarity, let me specify what I consider the crucial links between Graham and Conrad.

Conrad, like Graham, had very little respect for Christianity. In fact, Conrad tells Edward Garnett how he, "from the age of fourteen, disliked the Christian religion, its doctrines, ceremonies and festivals" (1986, 2:468). To Conrad's mind, something in Christianity lends "itself with amazing facility to cruel distortion," and consequently, Christianity "has brought an infinity of anguish to innumerable souls-on this earth" (5:358). Not surprisingly, when an evangelist presented Conrad "with a pocket copy of the English Bible," Conrad, who noticed that the book "was printed on rice paper," "used the leaves for rolling cigarettes" (1924, 96).11 While Conrad had just as little respect for Christianity as Graham, his critique of Christianity was much more subtle. Therefore, in Heart of Darkness, while Conrad exposes the theology of colonization, he resists the temptation to be as overt as Graham, though Graham, who understands how British Imperialism has its roots in Christian theology, is in a position to understand precisely how the theological mentality of Heart of Darkness has been used to justify the European exploitation of Africa.12