In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the Africans are looked down upon and treated horribly by the white invaders coming into their nation so much so they are dehumanized.  A quote within the story portraying the dehumanizing attitude towards the black people is:  "A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants" (Conrad, 80).  The fact that the Africans were almost naked dehumanizes them because much like animals who show nothing but their skin, these people were not given the necessitates they needed to survive in the African climate.  If anything would happened to them due to the lack of clean and plentiful clothes, no one would particularly care.  This attitude relates to the way humans treat their animals.  Another way the reader sees dehumanization through this quote is by the way they refer to the black people as ants.  This shows the reader the attitude that the white people hold of themselves, they see themselves as ultimately powerful, far superior, mighty, and in total control of the course of the African's life.  The comparison to an ant shows how they view the Africans as powerless and insignificant.  They don't see these people as human beings they dehumanize them by allowing them to wear very little clothing and to be compared to an insect crawling on the ground.  Throughout Heart of Darkness the white invaders try to colonize African villages but they do it in a way that  focuses the power onto them so they are able to dehumanize these people in order to maintain this power.