Othering of African Natives in European Literature: A Post-Colonial Study of H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines

Abstract

The presentresearch aims to investigate H.Rider Haggard’sKing Solomon’s Minesfrom the perspective of post-colonialism. The main purpose of this research is to unveil biased representation of African natives in western text. This study argues that Haggard being animperial English writer, has writtenKing Solomon’s Mines with reference to the specific phenomenonof othering of African natives presenting them as barbaric, cannibal, exotic other and powerless blacks. Not only that, African natives have been consideredas non-being by demonizing, ridiculing, and declaring their cultures and way of life as inferior and valueless. The studyfocuses on why the writer portrays English characters as superior self, and African natives as inferior, savage and barbaric other.The study, looking through the lens of Edward Saidian notion of Orientalism precisely brings the idea that Haggard is an orientalist writer and his novelKing Solomon’s Minesis a colonial text as the vivid binary of the English self and the African other remains an active ingredient of the novel.