The narrative within a narrative structure means there's a parallel between the Congo and the Thames.Matt Cavanaugh wrote:The animalistic, violent, dangerous savages in the story are black. The avaricious , violent, dangerous civilized men in the story are white. For Conrad, all of humanity is 'at heart' savage.James Caruthers wrote:
The crux of the matter is how all people who are not white are depicted in the book. We never really get any outside perspective IIRC to imply these perspectives on those other races are not correct. In the logic of the book, it's perfectly reasonable to say black people are savages, violent, cannibals, barely domesticated, evil, dangerous and animalistic, because they are all of those things in the novel and not really anything else.
The lasting power of the story is its allegorical depiction of the natives as mankind's brutal, inner savage exposed naked, the journey up river as the gradual stripping of the vestments of civilization that cloak but do not alter that inner savagery. (Also perfectly captured in APOCALYPSE NOW by the progression from SNAFU to FUBAR of the US military in Vietnam.)
Your typical 15 year-old reader can completely grasp Conrad's allegory. So, it's no surprise your typical SJW can't. For, while the SJW is happy to depict the white colonialists as grasping and exploitative, SJW dogma demands the 'trope' of the 'Noble Savage'.
Shatterface