Colonialism and Its Legacy in Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart

Colonialism is one of the most defining and devastating forces of modern history, reshaping continents and cultures through conquest, exploitation, and cultural erasure. Two novels that confront the moral and psychological dimensions of colonialism are Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958). Though separated by nearly six decades, these texts exist in direct conversation. Heart of Darkness represents the cold European colonial gaze, while Things Fall Apart reclaims the indigenous voice, illuminating the complexity and humanity of the societies that colonialism sought to dominate. The two novels critique imperialism, exposing its brutality, hypocrisy, and legacy.

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad delivers an indictment of European imperialism through the journey of Marlow, a sailor navigating the Congo River in search of the enigmatic Kurtz. Although often interpreted as an anti-colonial text, Heart of Darkness primarily focuses on the psychological and existential consequences of colonialism. Marlow is disturbed not just by the violence he witnesses but by the lies that justify it—the rhetoric of civilization, enlightenment, and progress that allows for horrific exploitation.

The novel’s most famous line—Kurtz’s dying words, “The horror! The horror!”—is a cryptic epitaph for imperialism. What exactly is the horror? The violence? The hypocrisy? The collapse of European identity when removed from its structures? Conrad leaves the answer unresolved, reflecting the ambiguous nature of the European gaze. Marlow is repelled and fascinated by the wilderness and the African “other.” The Africans are rarely individualized; instead, they are described in dehumanizing, abstract terms: “black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees… nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation.”

It is this objectification that Chinua Achebe would later condemn as “a bloody racist book,” arguing that Heart of Darkness reduces Africans to nameless backdrops to European angst. Indeed, the novel is less concerned with the actual consequences of imperial rule on African lives and more focused on unraveling European moral authority. Conrad critiques colonialism not for what it does to the colonized but for what it reveals about the colonizers.

Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a counter-narrative to Heart of Darkness. Conrad presents Africa as a blank canvas for European experience, while Achebe restores the depth and dignity of the Igbo people in pre-colonial Nigeria. The novel follows Okonkwo, a proud but deeply flawed Igbo warrior, as his society faces the encroachment of British missionaries and colonial administrators. Unlike Heart of Darkness, this world is filled with names, customs, internal conflicts, and a functioning moral and social order.

Achebe’s prose style is crucial to this re-humanization. He blends English with Igbo idioms, parables, and oral storytelling traditions, creating a narrative that feels more culturally grounded and accessible to a global audience. He deliberately includes Igbo proverbs such as “Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten,” which roots the text in a linguistic and philosophical heritage. By doing so, Achebe demonstrates that African societies are not as primitive as they are often made out to be. Instead, they are complex, self-aware, and human.

Importantly, Achebe does not idealize pre-colonial Igbo life. The novel openly critiques its gender hierarchies, rigid customs, and Okonkwo’s toxic masculinity. However, it refuses to see African society as needing salvation from outsiders. Colonialism, when it arrives, does not bring order to chaos. It breaks a system that was already ordered in its own way. The title Things Fall Apart, drawn from W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming,” signals the violent rupture that colonialism brings and the spiritual and cultural disintegration it causes.

The key distinction between the two novels is in who controls the narrative. In Heart of Darkness, Africa is an unknowable void—a psychological testing ground for Europeans. Africans are peripheral and denied interiority. The novel critiques colonialism as an existential crisis for white men rather than a material catastrophe for the colonized. On the other hand, Things Fall Apart puts African subjectivity at the center. It shows not only what colonialism does to an individual like Okonkwo but also how it destroys a community’s entire way of life.

Another point of contrast is how each novel presents power and language. In Heart of Darkness, European power is portrayed as both omnipotent and hollow. Kurtz is a god among the tribes he dominates, yet he is also a madman lost in delusion. With its chaotic, unknowable power, the jungle mocks the idea of European control. In Things Fall Apart, British colonial power enters slowly but methodically, using religion, bureaucracy, and military force. It divides communities, exploits internal tensions, and redefines the concepts of law and order. The District Commissioner’s casual reference to Okonkwo’s tragic story as a paragraph in his book—“The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger”—is an eerie moment that reflects Conrad’s detached tone, but this time from the outside looking in. Achebe shows how language becomes a tool of control and how colonialism rewrites its own history.

Both novels also reflect on legacy. Heart of Darkness offers no redemption or resolution. Things Fall Apart, in contrast, provides a tragic elegy. Okonkwo’s suicide reflects the personal and cultural collapse wrought by colonialism, but Achebe’s telling of it is itself an act of resistance. The very existence of Things Fall Apart is a reclamation of narrative power, a way to restore the humanity that Conrad’s novel effaces.

Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart offer two radically different perspectives on colonialism. Though critical of imperial hypocrisy, Conrad's novel remains confined to a European consciousness. Achebe’s work, in contrast, reclaims African agency and insists on the legitimacy of indigenous voices. While Heart of Darkness leaves readers with a sense of moral and existential dread, Things Fall Apart insists on witnessing the specific, lived consequences of colonial intrusion.

These novels ask a fundamental question: Whose story gets told, and how? Colonialism was not just a political and economic conquest—it was a narrative one. Achebe’s answer is to write back, speak the names, tell the stories, and restore the center that the European gaze had displaced.