Into the Heart of Nature: Conradian Echoes in Helon Habila’s <em>Oil on Water</em>

Abstract

This paper develops an intertextual reading that brings together Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Helon Habila's Oil on Water. It analyzes the major thematic and stylistic aspects that the two texts share: the presence of a metaphorical journey, the description of social and environmental damage as interrelated processes, and the presence of dialogic structures and narrative skepticism, which reveal the complexity of the oil conflict and question the possibility of finding the truth. The comparison between the two narratives shows how Habila recontextualizes the Conradian tropes to address socially and historically specific concerns related to oil extraction in the Niger Delta region, which were beyond Conrad's experience. From a theoretical point of view, the process of recontextualization that Habila undertakes transcends the traditional understanding of postcolonial intertextuality as an oppositional response to colonial ideology.