While he used to worry about the best ways to bring (as his painting demonstrates) the “light” of civilization to the Congo, he dies as a man believing that the Company should simply “Exterminate all the brutes!”

It really happened: The animal (a water buffalo, or carabao) was killed – but not for the film. The tribe in the film was a real indigenous tribe that lived in the area, and they had already decided to slaughter it. Coppola merely decided to film the event.

Kurtz is not stable mentally or physically, slowly succumbing to death on his boat. When he realizes he is near death, he utters this phrase, which carries deep meaning, as his last words. In fact, he refers to all things witnessed and done throughout his stay in the Congo.

Marlow suggests that the loneliness and unfamiliarity of the African environment induces Kurtz’s madness, and that his mind weakens the deeper he travels into the “heart of darkness.” As Marlow describes it: “Being alone in the wilderness…

Marlow lies to Kurtz’s Intended to spare her the painful reality of her fiancé’s descent into madness and evil. Marlow lies that the last word Kurtz uttered was his fiancée’s name because “it would have been too dark” to tell her that Kurtz last spoke of pure and desolate horror.

Kurtz, one of the leading characters, the other being Marlow, the narrator of the soty, represents many symbols in the novel. Firstly, he symbolizes the greed and the commercial mentality of the white people of the western countries. Secondly, he symbolizes the white man’s love of power.

How did Kurtz get so much ivory? He is astonished by him and the Russian tells him to bring Kurtz away quickly. The Russian was close to Kurtz and Kurtz got this ivory from raiding tribes for their ivory. He sees spiked human heads and he relates it to the idea of restraint by stating “Kurtz suffered too much.

Marlow respects Kurtz and his decisions, and also Kurtz respects Marlow, but they weren’t friends, they just had no other. In the end of the story, when Marlow meets Kurtz’s wife, he has realized that Kurtz was a sort of universal genius, because he had read Kurtz texts and was really fascinated.

According to the harlequin, the natives worship Kurtz as the false god he puts himself out to be. The idea he established emphasizing that the deity of the Africans are the European white men has clouded the minds of the natives causing them to believe that Kurtz is basically their savior.

By the time Marlow, the protagonist, sees Kurtz, he is ill with jungle fever and almost dead. Marlow seizes Kurtz and endeavors to take him back down the river in his steamboat. Kurtz dies on the boat with the last words, “The horror!

Eventually, the Manager’s servant boy peeked into the mess-room and announced, in a contemptuous voice, “Mistah Kurtz — he dead.” Kurtz was buried in the jungle the next day. Stricken by Kurtz’s death, Marlow almost considered suicide, and the remainder of his journey back to Europe is omitted from his narrative.

Marlow throws his shoes overboard because they are soaked with blood from the helmsman’s wounds.

Another major figure of the novel is Marlow. He has a symbolic role in the novel. He symbolizes the spirit of adventure and a love of knowledge. He stands for the thoughtful observer of human life and a student of human nature.

Marlow remains loyal to Kurtz at the last (1481) because he has taught Marlow of the heart of darkness within all of us. That evil side lurking within that must be controlled if we are to keep our humanity.

The horror!” Marlow tells us that he interprets Kurtz’s final words as “a judgement upon the adventures of his soul on this earth.” Whatever the truth Kurtz has glimpsed, Marlow sees its perception as a “moral victory”.

Kurtz dies on the journey back up the river but not before revealing to Marlow the terrifying glimpse of human evil he’d been exposed to. “The horror! The horror!” he tells Marlow before dying. Marlow almost dies as well, but he makes it back to the sepulchral city to recuperate.

When Marlow finally reaches the Inner Station, he meets Kurtz when a group of native Africans bears him down in a stretcher. He’s not looking too good, but he still has the voice of a radio announcer. Kurtz has a private interview with the manager and they argue.

In the first sentence, Marlow contrasts “gorgeous” with the uncivilized image of “wild.” He calls her an “apparition,” a typically white image that at once glorifies her by whitewashing her and belittles her by likening her to something dead.

Marlow changes his position in relationship to imperialism, developing a more critical stance. In Heart Of Darkness, Marlow changes in the sense that he moves towards self,whilst moving towards the centre of earth, taking on a whole new perspective as he does so.

When Marlow asks the brickmaker about Kurtz, the brickmaker gives a glowing report: “He is a prodigy,” the brickmaker explains, “an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil know what else.” Marlow waits for rivets he can use to attach new steel plates to the hull of the steamer to repair it.

the Nellie

The brickmaker tells Marlow that Kurtz is a prodigy, sent as a special emissary of Western ideals by the Company’s directors and bound for quick advancement.

A Russian trader and disciple of Kurtz, called “The Harlequin” by Marlow, approaches the steamboat and tells Marlow that Kurtz is still alive. Marlow learns that the hut they previously saw is the Harlequin’s. The Harlequin speaks enthusiastically of Kurtz’s wisdom, saying, “This man has enlarged my mind.”

Marlow learned that Kurtz asked the Company’s Administration to send him into the jungle to show how much ivory he could acquire, and that he sent his assistant back to the Manager because he found him inadequate for the work. Marlow further learned that there were “strange rumours” circulating about Kurtz’s behavior.

He describes the woman as a “savage and superb” African woman that was pacing back and forth outside the steamship.

Heart of Darkness was first published as a three-part serial story in Blackwood’s Magazine. Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa.