King Leopold's Ghost Analysis

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In Western society, a victim is rarely recognized beyond the context of how he or she gained that unfortunate title. The victim becomes entangled in the web of the “savages-victims-saviors” (SVS) complex (Mutua 2001: 1). For an individual to be recognized as a victim he or she has to be a part of a larger problem and thus becomes the victim of that wrongdoing. For example in King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa the author, Adam Hochschild, describes King Leopold’s attempt to colonize the Congo. Hochschild clearly depicts a state of exploitation and brutality at the hands of King Leopold and his men who savagely dehumanized the Congolese people. The book’s title in itself highlights the biases of the rhetoric used to further the agenda that supports a human rights movement based on the SVS model—it represents the stark dichotomy among heroes, perpetrators, and victims (2001: 3). Thus the victims, the Congolese, are victims of colonization – their “victim-status” dependent on their perpetrator’s actions. However, it is important to note that while colonialism and human rights …show more content…
The King’s flaws in his own country: his greed, his many mistresses, his distasteful wife, and his overall disregard for the wellbeing of his people ignited his people’s hatred of him and created his “enemy status.” This depiction of the king made it easier for his people and for other westerners to want to help his victims as ultimately they are uniting behind the same cause – to bring the enemy, King Leopold, to his demise. The portrayal of an enemy under a human rights campaign is ironically very similar to the motives of the enemy himself in that the enemy attempted to dehumanize other individuals and conversely, the human rights campaign tries to depict that individual as less than human and exploit his savage-like behaviors (Mutua 2001:
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