Black or white

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,  Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces  That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
- George Gordon Byron

As we read in "Heart of Darkness", the use of words like "neger", "others", "white", "slave" and  so on,  denotes the  racism  felt by Conrad and  showed in his character Marlow about the Africans and Europeans. The use of these  might  make  you think that  this author is  racist, or maybe   the  context which he lived taught him that. In my point of view, he uses them  to  make   a comparison  between both cultures, and   he uses, aldo, metaphores to express it  in different ways.

As  a first thought about  this book, is that the writer is  a racist  guy who hated the africans. In this case, this idea is correct, but it is clearly influenced  by the  social context  in which Conrad  lived, because  around  1800,  in Europe, the  need to conquer a place was kept as a main thought, and the  people they  meet in these places,  were "savages". In other words, they were considered  an inferior  race; this idea was  influenced by the other believes  that europeans had. In this case,  along the story, we can notice that   the  main  character, Marlow,  was rude to  them and also was egocentric; but as the story goes on,  he starts  to change a  bit his way of seeing the  africans. Conrad   used  these  words to  express a way of thinking  in the 1800, but also, he tried to  show, how this  thoughts start to change  in  people who  kept in touch with them.

On the other hand,   he uses  light  and  dark as a metaphore of neger and white, which  changes though out   Marlow's point of view. In this case,   we can  notice  it, because Conrad uses  "light" and "dark"  a lot  in his  sentences  and these are located  when Marlow, start to change  his  point of view about them. For example when  he  was  told to go to Congo,  they describe this place like a "dark place" that represents  the  unknown, just like the  Africans were to Marlow, but as the sotry goes on, this perspective changes. Also, it is important to take into consideration that  the use of these words, was made refering to a group, not   just someone,  so, this  ideas change  little by little  until the moment ( I think) he would accept them as  human  beings, just  like in the  part where   someone  dies in the boat and  Marlow prefers to throw him away, rather than  use him as food.

In conclusion,  the words that  Conrad uses,  have a reason of beeing there,  because, we must remember that  literature main purpose is  to  express a  way of thinking   and it can be considered  a primary source of information which shows the  point of view, organization and  ideas of a society.