An Outpost Of Progress

Irony can be tricky. Irony puts tremendous responsibility on the reader. It juxtaposes multiple incongruous realities in the hopes that the reader will perceive what often the characters themselves do not or refuse to. The difference between what the characters perceive and what the reader understands creates irony.

Although the story is constructed on Conrad’s stinging critique of European colonialism, that criticism escapes both Belgians within the narrative, and it is up to the reader to note the significant differences between what the Belgians profess and the reality of their outpost life. Neither Belgian moves toward the sort of epiphany that would indicate they have come to terms with the hypocrisy of the European occupation of central Africa. Despite their privileged position as emissaries of Western civilization, they are lazy, incompetent, unfocused, and entirely self-involved, none of which they actually understand about themselves. They see themselves as the white men able to direct the operations of the outpost when in actuality the entire outpost is under the de facto guidance of Makola, who, despite his fawning nature with the white men, loathes them and sees them as comically inferior. The so-called Outpost of Progress is itself a sustained deception: despite its grand title, it is three hastily erected ramshackle buildings alongside the Congo River. The European’s professed mission—to bring civilization and culture to the “uncivilized” locals of the Congo is quickly revealed to be little more than a land grab with the intention of pillaging valuable resources (such as ivory) from locals, who they believe have neither the awareness nor the weaponry to stop them. The Belgians’ angry objections and moral outrage over Makola’s deal to trade servants for the load of ivory is quickly exposed as hypocrisy as the two Belgians calculate the value of the ivory. The civilized white men reveal their savage nature when Kayerts and Carlier chase each other around the hut like caged animals over nothing more than a spoonful of sugar, the argument ending when Kayerts shoots his unarmed companion point blank. Nothing is as it appears, and the white men in the story never see what both Conrad and by extension the reader do.

Though irony is borne out of the tension between what the narrator understands and what the characters do not, it is defined as behavior or events that are the opposite of what would be expected. In this case, the characters expect to be shining examples of civilized behavior and to succeed in what they believe to be the noble goal of bringing the “savage” locals into the bosom of Christian morality. However, these supposed examples of Western ideals succumb to the pressure of their posting and prove themselves to have precisely the kind of savage, immoral instincts they were sent there to fight against. This flipping of the script is the very definition of irony.