Things Fall Apart Contradicts Stereotypes and Stereotyping in Heart of

Chinua Achebes Things come in Apart Contradicts Stereotypes in Conrads centre of DarknessIn An Image of Africa racialism in Conrads magnetic core of Darkness, Chinua Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his anti-Semite(a) stereotypes towards the continent and people of Africa. He claims that Conrad propagated the dominant image of Africa in the western imagination rather than portraying the continent in its true plaster cast (1793). Africans were portrayed in Conrads novel as savages with no language some other than grunts and with no other occupations besides merging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow (1792-3). To Conrad, the Africans were not characters in his account, but exclusively props. Chinua Achebe responded with a novel, Things Fall Apart an antithesis to Heart of Darkness and similar work by other European writers. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tells the story of an Ibo man, Okonkwo, and the tragedies which he has to endure. Afr icans are represented as individuals capable of speech, not honorable virtuoso massive conglomerate of natives. Their usance are not regarded as queer or bizarre, but as the norm-functioning no differently than the variety of western customs do. And the land itself is described as a mix of towns and farms, not a mysterious land which breeds insanity. In almost every respect, Things Fall Apart contradicts the stereotypes set up in Heart of Darkness.Achebe opens his lecture, An Image of Africa, with the story of a student who sent him a letter saying how he was particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe, not realizing that the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is just of odd customs and superstitions as well (1784). Western thou... ...nters many of the degrading stereotypes that colonial lit has placed on Africa. In his lecture, An Image of Africa Racism in Conrads Heart of Darkness, Achebe documents the ways that Conrad deh umanizes Africans by reducing their religious practices to superstition, saying that they should remain in their place, taking away their ability of speech, and depreciating their complex geography to just a single mass of jungle. Achebe carefully crafts Things Fall Apart to replication these stereotypes and show that Africa is in fact a rich land full of intelligent people who are, in fact, very human. Works CitedAchebe, Chinua. An Image of Africa Racism in Conrads Heart of Darkness. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York Norton, 2001. 1783-1794.Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York back Books, 1994.