The Dilemma Of Joseph Conrad: An Anti-colonialist Fighter Or A Colonialist Advocator

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was a Modern British writer with the Polish origin. He was considered as one of the eight modern writers in British literature by many critics. The amount of studies on him, his works or writing techniques is extensive and uncountable. Conrad was a prolific writer throughout his life and his works involving many fields of human lives, including physical world and mental world. According to the differences of the themes, his works could be roughly divided into three categories: the navigation novel, the jungle novel and the social political novel.Joseph Conrad drew on his own experiences when he wrote. Heart of Darkness is based upon a six-month journey Conrad spent in the Congo district. It is the masterpiece of Conrad's jungle novels, which exposes the deep conflicts and contradictions within the human heart, and the conflicts between the advanced western civilization and the natural savage state. Since its publication, Heart of Darkness has become one of the most read and debated work of fiction in the English language. It has probably received more critical attention than any other prose works of Conrad's.In this novel, Conrad tried to disclose and attack the crimes and hypocrisy of Colonialism, hereby many critics believed the publication of this novel was ahead of its times. However, he also showed the superiority and pride of belonging to the advanced western civilization between the lines of his works, which revealed his colonial attitudes and contributed to the vindication to the Colonialism. This thesis tries to analyze the colonial and anti-colonial tendency of Heart of Darkness by the light of the postcolonial criticism. Judged historically, Heart of Darkness was ahead of its time. However, influenced by the social ideology of his time, Conrad could not get rid of his underlying colonial ideology and that is the major concern of the thesis.This thesis consists of one introduction and five chapters.The first part, as a form of prelude, works as an introduction and offers the background of the author and the main contents of the novel.The first chapter is a brief review of several influential current critical views on Heart of Darkness, including reading it from the idea about the exploration of the human nature, the idea about Racist Criticism, the idea about Feminist Criticism, and idea about Freudian Psychology and so on.The second chapter concentrates on the analysis of the postcolonial subject by means of postcolonial critical theory. On the basis of the analysis of the African colonial history and the depiction of Marlow, it is discovered that the novel is an exposition of the crimes and the hypocrisy of colonialism, and also an attack on imperialism and colonialism.The third chapter is concerned with the duality of Conrad's postcolonial consciousness. His racial prejudice against Africa and the native Africans, together with Marlow's vindication towards Kurtz and Marlow's fantasy towards colonialism indicated that Conrad contributed to the maintenance of the imperial and colonial control.The forth chapter is a close study of the sources about the author's Dual Consciousness,including the social reason, the cultural reason and his personal experiences.The fifth chapter makes the conclusion on the basis of the above mentioned analysis.