Problems with Empire

A large portion of British ideology regarding Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can largely be summed up in two basic themes. First, the large focus on racial and cultural differences between Britons and the native peoples that they had conquered. Second, that Britain was the most highly developed civilization in the world, and therefore, 'better' than all the people of its conquered areas, whom could only benefit through their exposure to Mother Britain and its culture. However, these two ideologies are challenged by many writers of the era, including Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness and by George Orwell in his Shooting an Elephant. Both of these works stand out as being remarkably intricate, both introduce characters who had at one time espoused the ideology of the Empire, however, in the course of the story find that the reality of imperialism is much different from the ideology of the empire, and both argue that its harmful effects are seen not only in the lives of the oppressed, but in the corrupted souls of the oppressors.

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad takes us deep into the wilderness of Africa, and places the reader right in the middle of Britain's moral strife over its imperial mission. As Marlow journeys up the river to the Central Station to meet Kurtz, his internal dialogue takes us on a journey deep into the rotten heart of imperialism. Marlow reexamines every principle of imperial ideology, arguing back and forth within himself between the rhetoric of the imperial mission and the realities of brutality and exploitation, finally concluding that imperialism is: "just robbery with violence…The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much" (951). In this same way Orwell, in his Shooting an Elephant, recalls the hatred, coldness, and depression that he came to feel as a sub-divisional police officer in Lower Burma. Such terrible emotions, he tells us, "are the normal by-products of imperialism" (1361). And these emotions lead him to conclude that: "imperialism was an evil thing" (1361).

Marlow eventually finds himself caught up in a "conspiracy" that violates every value he respects and does so, ironically, in order to uphold the "virtuous imperial mission." Orwell, in Shooting an Elephant, finds himself in exactly the same position as Marlow. He meets with the conflict of what is expected of him, which differs from what he finds, would be the right thing to do. Both Marlow and Orwell are disillusioned by their glimpse of the reality behind screen of the imperial mission. Both are forced into dong things that they do not want to do, things that according to their personal values is wrong. Marlow hides the truth upon his return and tells lies to cover up "the horror" of it all, and Orwell is forced to shoot an elephant that he knows "with perfect certainty that [he] ought not shoot him" (1363).

By his process of self-examination, combined with the denegation of Kurtz as he ceases to exercise restraint and becomes a brute himself, Marlow, comes to understand both the reality of imperialism beyond the ideology and the corruption of the men who participate in it. Orwell also arrives at this conclusion, realizing, after comprehending that he "had got to shoot the elephant," that imperialism harms the conquering as well as the conquered, nurturing brutality and egotism. Saying, "when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys" (1363).

Conrad and Orwell show us through their stories that imperialism, instead of prompting the values that the empire supposedly stood for, in actuality, suppresses it. The very "freedom" and "enlightenment" that the British Empire was supposedly trying to bring to all these "backward" countries, was actually being smothered in the very hearts of the men that where supposed to be the champions and bringers of the "great European culture." Smothered, ironically, by the very ideologies that they where trying to force upon the native people. In the age-old aphorism "the conquer becomes the conquered." Trapped by his ideology, having lost the ability or will to make careful rational and ethical decisions, "He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib…He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it" (1363). He looses his individuality and his ability to act as a separate being. The imperialistic civilization, when it does not exercise restraint, systematically brutalizes not only other peoples and cultures, but also, its own people and culture.