Özet:

This study aims to analyse social Darwinism and imperialism that accelerated colonialism with racist discourses in 19th century by taking two literary works Heart of Darkness (1899) and The Beach of Falesá (1892) into the centre of the discussion. Although written in different settings by authors from different backgrounds, successively in Congo by Joseph Conrad and in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson, two novels shed light on the 19th century imperial and colonial discourses. The first part of the article will focus on the relation between imperialism, social Darwinism, racism and their reflections on the works. Later on, these works and their authors will critically be compared through a thematic approach to evaluate their critical stance for imperialism and social Darwinism. The article concludes that the central protagonists, white men Wiltshire in The Beach of Falesá and Marlow in Heart of Darkness set out their journey with imperial pursuits such as exploitation and superiority, but they both go through a sense of illumination and catharsis as they reach at the heart of imperialism where they encounter the politics of what is savage and civilised.

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