Response to Chinua Achebe reading

As mentioned in the article, “Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray – a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate”. I was thus reminded of this particular quote I have read in the Preface written by Oscar Wilde for his own book, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

I think the quote pretty much explains itself in opposition to Achebe’s point about “artistic good faith”.

In addition, I think that the plurality of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is precisely what makes it so interesting and perhaps, worth spending time studying. HOD can be read as a racist text, but at the same time, its subversion of the Empire’s civilizing mission also critiques the Empire’s idea of progress as a form of regression.

If I may add, I believe that pluralism is central to the reading of modernist texts.

I shall conclude with another one of my favourite quotes:

“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital” (Oscar Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

(224 words!)