Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away”(599).As described in this passage, the African natives become completely powerless as human beings once they are given their role as animals. This dehumanization allows the Europeans to be without accepting responsibility because they view themselves as superior and the group of people they look down upon as less than human and even as objects. Once the exploitation of the natives is extreme enough, morality is outweighed by expediency and the uses of the powerless become frightening.Grouping and dehumanization, both direct outgrowths of racism, ultimately lead to cultures being destroyed. The African natives while being reduced to ugly creatures that are less than animals nonetheless have ideas that the whites believe must be destroyed. The Europeans destroyed the African culture because they feared them. In Heart of Darkness Conrad depicts the cannibals as frightening and intimidating. Their [the cannibals] headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in ringlets, stood near me. ‘Aha!’ I said, just for a few fellowship’s sake. ‘Catch ‘im,’ he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth—‘catch ‘im. Give ‘im to us.’ ‘To you, eh?’ I asked: ‘what would you do with them?’ ‘Eat ‘im!’ he said curtly…(Conrad 111)One could not possible fear a man speaking with “bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth” and speaking of eating another human being. This example shows that the whites were feared the natives therefore desired to destroy them. The Europeans also devastated African cultures because they felt the culture contained no worth. In Robin Ha...
