Things Fall Apart is a literary appreciation written by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian-born author. The story's premise revolves around the concerns that Africans faced during the post- and pre-colonial periods of the nineteenth century. The story's backdrop may have been based on African events, but the precise events occurred in Nigeria, where the author grew up and writes as if he witnessed the events unfold. The Heart of Darkness, on the other hand, was written by Joseph Conrad, who is of Polish-British heritage. It was published in three installments in Blackwood's magazine. It is about a voyage that was meant to travel from River Thames in London towards the Congo River in Congo Free State. However, the variation between the two in terms of the way the story is presented is that the latter is told from a narrator’s perspective while the aforementioned is written from a witness’ perception.
Heart of Darkness
At the beginning of the story, the author describes Marlow who had an in-depth fascination with maps. The awkward thing about him is that he liked the parts that were blank. However, as he grew up, such pieces became filled up and were no longer blank as they used to be initially. This signified that they had been occupied in all manner of ways. The map is not the focus here but rather the narrator; Marlow. He tells his fellow sailors aboard the board the story of how he managed to become the Captain of the Ivory trading Company. What is for sure is that he had always been ambitious from the time he was young judging from the way he took a look at maps and his fascination to blank spaces that gave him the implication that they were either unoccupied or undiscovered.
“The vicinity is full of diseased Africans who waited earnestly for their deaths after working tirelessly on the railroad as their bodies were sick and thin as air.”
This is the scene where Marlow first set foot on the banks of Congo River after their vessel had docked there. After that, they had been taken by a steamer through a little sea towards their preferred destination by a captain on a Swede. On their arrival at the location of Company station, Marlow is saddened by what he sees. Uncountable Africans are lying helplessly as life slowly seeps from them. Apparently, they had all been working on building the railway line for the colonialists who had taken charge of their country. Marlow was able to discern this from the onset where he saw others actively involved in removing rocks by using explosives to break rocks.
The scene that Marlow witnessed that got him horror-struck was merely a tip of the iceberg of the things that had been taking place in Africa that were attributed to the arrival of colonial powers. He was profoundly hurt by the fact that the individuals he saw were helplessly lying there waiting for their death as though they were not crucial to the whites they had been working for the entire time since their arrival. This gives the outright implication to the reader that the colonialists did not care about the Congolese they had conscripted to work for them at no pay. This is because, to them, they were not essential and they were like donkeys who worked all day tirelessly.
The European powers had taken control of Congo owing to its richness in minerals. The latter made them forget that even Africans were human beings just as they were and deserved better treatment than the one they accorded to them when they arrived in Congo and took control. From the perspective of Marlow’s narration, he is saddened by the scene he bores witness to and how the Captain treats his ‘employees.’ When they set course for Congo, he thought he would find a place as the one he had left in London where people were treated as humans who had rights and freedoms that were observed at all times irrespective of the place they stayed or their historical backgrounds but seemingly that was not the case. Judging from Marlow's initially like for huge spaces on maps, it is evident that he chose to join the rest in the sail to Congo due to its substantial appearance on the map as it was a vast nation.
By reading the chosen text above, one may feel as though they are physically taking part in the voyage Just as Marlow did and was seeing everything he saw inclusive of the dying people. The text drives the human mind back to the colonial times and the manner in which things were handled. Also, it sheds light on the way Africans were treated; overworked all day without rest and time to replenish or even take meals. The reader pities the individuals but then there is no way to help them as the events had taken place in the past, but the human mind has traveled to towards it as though it is still an ongoing process.
Before the advent of slavery, slave trade and colonialism, Africa was a peaceful continent save for the minor cases of communal fights and disagreements which would always be solved and the people would live to see another day as though the events ever took place. However, the advent of colonialists disrupted all that as all the practices and values that Africans believed in were tarnished and dragged away from them as they were busy working for the Europeans on either place they were forcefully taken. They were made to operate against their will which makes it even more painful as they were treated like animals who had no say on what was being done to them at any particular point and time.
Things Fall Apart
The book commences by describing a famous wrestler Okonkwo. Chinua Achebe spends more significant time in the first part of the novel to give a narration of the things that Africans during his season fancied. He succinctly describes the skilled fighter and how his back had never touched the ground while in the fighting session thus made him one of the most acclimated fighters. The author starts by talking about the actual events that take place in Nigeria which is the setting of the story. African greatly valued their cultural practices and wrestling was one of them. By so doing, it is apparent that the author appreciates his culture and beliefs. He then takes us through the wrestler’s journey and how he used to travel from place to place staging fights which he always emerged victorious. It is through Okonkwo that the reader gets to learn of the advancement of the colonialists in Nigeria.
Some of the people revolt as they perceive them as being intruders thus gets them exiled. The Europeans arrived in African lands in which they were not welcomed, and instead of being kind to them, they take them to prison and forcefully settle on their land and do away with their cultural and religious practices. They feel as though the spiritual practices of the Nigerians are substandard and theirs is better. This is quite ironical as they feel the Nigerian's religion is weak and lacks basis and feel that theirs is better yet they are the ones taking control of them by force which does not portray any religious acclimation. Okonkwo hangs himself before he is taken to court for fear that the colonial courts would judge him unfairly and get him exiled. He decides to take the easy way out. This shows how much Africans had no faith in the leadership of the colonialists. However, his action is against the traditions and cultural practices of the Igbo people of whom he is a part. The fact that he chose to do it irrespective of the latter shows how desperate he was to unchain himself from the colonial powers on their land.
Conclusively, both stories give the reader the picture of how events unraveled during the colonial regime by stating the bare facts and circumstances that made Africans feel oppressed. Even though Conrad tries to make Marlow’s narration lively by giving the most painful encounters that Africans went through, Chinua Achebe gives the events first hand through the Protagonist Okonkwo and the mysteries he went through together with his fellow Nigerians. The constant thing about them is that they both make the person reading the text feel as though they are witnessing the events take place and even take them through the tiny details.
