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Irony Heart of Darkness Colonialism & Culture Question # 1 Irony Heart of Darkness To fully appreciate Joseph Conrad’s, Heart of Darkness it is vital to have a clear understanding of irony. Colonialism is a form of totalitarianism that seeks to enact total control of the people and cultures it inhabits. The victims of this savage rule respond with ambivalence and the barbaric acts carried out against them can be revealed with the ironic voice of the colonizers who reflect on their experiences. Irony is an alternative form of knowledge that allows for interpretation of events and actions that would typically be ignored. Irony allows for contradiction it is a figure of speech that allows for one thing to be said while its intended meaning is always something else. Its root word is “faint ignorance” a form of lie, however the ability to pretend not to know stems from actually knowing. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad presents many instances of racist commentary that portray a devaluation of the Congo inhabitants. Oftentimes Europeans are depicted as individuals that are superior to and more human than the Africans. However, the distinction between a purely racist novel and a novel where racism is used as a means of se