Heart of Darkness and its critics
Marlow travels up the river and finds cruelty, emptiness and Kurtz, whose last words are «The horror! The horror!». The novella takes empire apart from the inside. Chinua Achebe's objection is that it does so while using Africa as a backdrop and leaving Africans without speech. Naming both readings is what a good answer does.
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«» exposes the greed and self-deception of through Marlow's journey, ending in Kurtz and «The horror!». It is still debated because Africans are given almost no voice, and a strong answer names both the achievement and the critique.
Hold the critique and the achievement in the same answer.
Othello and the outsider
Iago works on Othello with hints rather than accusations, and the general destroys what he loves without ever seeing proof. That Othello is a Moor in Venice matters: he is inside the state as its commander and outside it socially, which is exactly the gap Iago exploits.
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In «Othello», Iago manipulates through hints rather than accusations, and Othello destroys what he loves without proof. His position as an outsider in Venice is the crack the manipulation works in, which is why context matters for the reading.
Manipulation needs a crack to work in. Othello's is his outsider status.
Reading a work in context means asking what the text does with the world it came out of. Conrad's «» exposes the greed and self-deception of European through Marlow's journey up the Congo, and the novella is still debated because the Africans in it are given almost no voice of their own. Both things are true at once, and a strong answer says so.
Shakespeare's «Othello» shows jealousy as a destructive force and Iago as a master manipulator, while Othello's position as an outsider in Venice makes him easier to isolate. Context does not replace the text: you still need the lines. It explains why those lines landed the way they did.