Congo, Casement, and the Congo Atrocities - Alan Simmons

- Simmons discusses 2 men who wrote about the Congo: Conrad and Casement
- The two men knew and interacted with each other
- They were both "profoundly affected by their Congo experiences" and "found an outlet in their writing"
- They both shared a detestation for the atrocities they saw and supported reform
- However, their accounts of the mutilation differ significantly
- Casement began a crusade to find accurate eye-witness accounts to add to the reform movement. Therefore, his accounts offer graphic descriptions of specific atrocities to be presented to Parliament as an appeal for reform support.
- While Conrad wrote a fictional account intended for the public. therefore, Conrad uses much more hinting and vague suggestions (cannibalism example) rather than explicit facts. It is a "mixture of denial and evasion" perhaps, as Simmons suggests out of a threat to the European sense of self as "civilized."
- Simmmons then discusses the dilemma of expressing atrocities in general
- Conrad refers to the "unspeakable truth," but how exactly does one express things that are "unspeakable?"
- Cold hard facts, according to Simmons, are "doomed to be disbelieved because society has no context for it"
- "Heart of darkness" thus provides this context* and makes the discussion of uncomfortable facts more possible.
- Conrad expresses the unspeakable truth without over-exaggerating which would take away its credibility
- The facts are essentially unnecessary for Conrad's novella because "Officially, of course, it was denied. But man to man, everyone knew." He did not need to qualify the feasibility of his story. No one doubted it.