 In his <unk> study of the series , Jean @-@ Marie Apostolidès highlighted that in the Congolese adventure , Tintin represented progress and the Belgian state was a model for the natives to imitate . In doing so , he argued , they could become more European and thus <unk> from the perspective of Belgian society , but that instead they ended up appearing as parodies . <unk> that Tintin was imposing his own view of Africa onto the Congolese , Apostolidès remarked that Tintin appeared as a god @-@ figure , with evangelical overtones in the final scene . Literary critic Tom McCarthy concurred that Tintin represented the Belgian state , but also suggested that he acted as a Christian missionary , even being " a kind of god " akin to the character of <unk> in Joseph Conrad 's Heart of Darkness ( 1899 ) . McCarthy compared the scene where Tintin exposes Muganga as a fraud to that in which the character of <unk> exposes the magician in William Shakespeare 's The Tempest . 
