White Man’s Burden(ed) by Others: Reading Chinua Achebe and Analysing Rudyard Kipling

Abstract

The chosen article by Chinua Achebe brought a hugely different angle of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness i.e., the racist angle. He mentioned the keyways a text becomes so oblivious that readers ‘normalize’ the racist angle of the novella. In Conrad’s critically acclaimed works, there is covert racism that Achebe pointed out to the global audience. Even as a reader from ‘Orient’ it took me some time to absorb the obvious fact staring right into the face of every reader. Achebe presents the very understanding of African culture, and it is absolute mockery by a renowned writer like Joseph Conrad. The major question here then arises is, what is culture?