Achebe vs. Conrad (Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" vs. Achebe's anti-Conrad editorial)

In today's society, after one reads Joseph Conrad's story Heart of Darkness, he/she may gather that the author is racist. This thought will not only stay with the reader but also multiply after he reads Achebe's article: "An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness". Upon analyzing each work deeper, the reader makes himself certain that there could not be any other ways of interpreting either one. That is not to say …

…others, but they are still sordid to read. He presents the argument that all of the African population is in the state of nature, as Thomas Hobbes describes it (a state in which men are in a battle for survival; a life that is filthy, nasty, brutish and short). He does not, nevertheless, give the reader even a tad of a structured or scientifical thesis on which the reader is to work on and alter.