Apocalypse Now - Colonel Kurtz I ve seen horrors

Apocalypse Now - Colonel Kurtz: "I've seen horrors"


Feb 17, 2022

The horror! The horror
Colonel Kurtz's last words in Joseph Conrad's novella "Heart of Darkness" are "The horror! The horror!". This exclamation reflects the indescribable nature of his experiences and realizations about the human condition.

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The Horror of the Undying: Kurtz’s Final Words in Heart of Darkness

The deliberately cultivated ambiguity in Conrad’s writing style in Heart of Darkness envelops among other things the significance and the plausible implications of the dying words of Colonel Kurtz. In a novel where meaning and signification is often elusive and without clear conclusions or resolution, there is a certain unknowability or ambiguity associated with Kurtz’s dying words: “The horror! The horror!” in terms of what the object(s) of horror is/are (Conrad, p. 68). There are a number of ways in which these words can be understood; but it is important to acknowledge the ambiguity and uncertainty at the heart of these words as being also woven into the narrative in Heart of Darkness. Moreover, it is apt to observe the resemblance between the thick veil of mist shrouding the “impenetrable” Congolese forest (into the depths of which Marlow descends) and this multiplicity of meaning that shrouds not just Kurtz’s final words, but also, in retrospect the entirety of his mission as an ivory trader and even as a lover and a man.

On the one hand, it is through death that Kurtz is ultimately confronted with the abject miseries of his endeavors and of his failure as a man. His dying words, less than a sentence, and more like an object sputtering of some undiscernible truth at hand, could then be indicative of his unflinching cognizance of the extent and immensity of his own atrocities. The Dantean journey into the Inferno or the sojourn into the “heart of darkness” that offers the novel its title, could also include the journey into the inescapable truth of Kurtz’s own actions, along with the futility of the mercantile enterprise he had partaken in on behalf of The Company. Frances B. Singh argues that “Kurtz becomes an animated image carved out of old ivory…suggesting the loss of personality that colonialism effects on the rulers” (p. 270).

When elaborated in the context of imperialism, this realization or acknowledgement of Kurtz’s own colonial endeavors puts into question the question of darkness, with all its real or symbolic and metaphysical connotations. The heart of the darkness that is peered into by Kurtz, and for a brief glimpse by Marlow, who is disenchanted with the imperial project following Kurtz’s demise, is the darkness inhered within by Kurtz in exploiting the natives for gathering ivory. The savagery accrued unto his own heart undermines one of the fundamental assumptions upon which the colonial project was premised. The supposed racial and cultural superiority of the white man over the native savages with their barbaric ways and practices predicated that the civilizing mission of educating the natives was part of the white man’s burden. In reality, however, as the novel unfurls, and as Marlow too realizes, following his disenchantment with the reality of Kurtz (in stark contrast to the heavy mythologization and championing of the man endorsed by all his peers), this argument was a ruse used to justify the ruthless exploitation of the natives in what amounted to a systematic decimation of local cultures and lives. This was most notably revealed in the pamphlet handed over by an ill Kurtz to Marlow which contained a message reading “Exterminate all the brutes!” (Conrad, p. 61). Ironically, Kurtz had amassed a considerable number of native followers who dwelled in the forest, many of whose severed heads in a wreath had astounded Marlowe. These were the very people he had befriended in order to carry out his expeditions into ivory-rich terrain deep within the forest. That Kurtz had disposed with the moral compass when it came to his actions, and led his life in Congo beyond the dictates of moral convention or justice may also have been exposed to him at the moment of his death. In journeying into the dark interior of the forest, Kurtz had also travelled deep into the recesses of his own self. This was a man who resorted to extraordinarily brutal means to amass more ivory than any of The Company’s representatives. Not surprisingly then does Marlow surmise that Kurtz’s final words are an epiphany through which he finally came to see what succumbing to this darkness did to him.

Yet, despite the facile nature of the colonial enterprise revealed by Kurtz’s words about wanting to escape the Manager’s plans, Kurtz’s unheroic and undignified demise did have a considerable impact on Marlow who briefly contemplated suicide. Not only was it an abject horror echoed in the words of Kurtz, but also a vehement disenchantment with the imperial project guised as a “civilizing mission” that led Marlow to leave out the remainder of his journey back to Europe. This textual omission is also symbolic, since it suggests that the darkness had been inescapable all along — that there was no civilization to return to. The Russian had also entrusted him with spreading word of Kurtz’s heroics once they reached Europe. In spite of this, the matter-of-fact declaration by the Manager’s servant-boy (“Mistah Kurtz — he dead”) deflates the immediate discovery of the body of a man who had been venerated by most who knew him (Conrad, p. 69). When Kurtz’s cousin valorizes him as a man of “universal genius” or when the journalist alludes to his oratorial prowess (which could have made him a politician), all Marlow could do was hand them copies of Kurtz’s pamphlet (Conrad, p. 71). Marlow’s irritation with these individuals stemmed from their imperviousness to the fa;ade of the colonial enterprise, and concomitantly their own self-assuredness in the moral convictions and the correctness of their civilization. However, it was his fianc;, who claimed to know him better than anyone, who compels Marlow to reconsider the truth. He decides to camouflage the dire circumstances under which he found Kurtz dying, and instead of alluding to “the horror”, responded that his last word had been her name. Significantly enough, Marlow’s acts of textual omission and verbal manipulation remind us of the eerie aftermath of the horrors witnessed by Kurtz. The mental disintegration of a man who had embraced (and not suppressed his propensity for meting out violence) elevated to a God-like stature acts bleeds into Marlow’s return journey, and serves as a cautionary reminder for Marlow, who serves as the mirror of Kurtz.

A dramatically different stance on Kurtz’s death (played by Marlon Brando) is offered in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 cinematic adaptation of the novel, Apocalypse Now. The film dispenses with the very mystery, the intractable seduction of the darkness associated with the forest in Conrad, and revels instead in a stylistic excess in a plot set against the Vietnam War. Robert LaBrasca, in his astute reading of the film, attributes this stylistic excess to Coppola’s uncertainty with the character of Kurtz, and his intent to exalt the character. The tyrannical Kurtz is killed in the film by Willard, and the scenes of his death are interspersed with literary references (such as to T. S. Eliot’s Hollow Men) that expose the futility of his war-time endeavors. Rather than being driven by the accumulation of ivory or greed, as in the novel, the viewer encounters the director’s Kurtz as obsessed with exerting unrestrained willpower. Brando’s Kurtz carries the note of malice and brutality to an extreme, and thus does away with some of the ambiguity that readers had come to associate not only with Kurtz’s death, but also his life and accomplishments in general.

This essay has attempted to flesh out the personal, colonial/political implications of Kurtz’s dying words in the first two body paragraphs. This is followed by the aftermath of Kurtz’s death and Marlow’s textual manipulations in reporting that death to preserve the idealized image of Kurtz in Europe. Finally, Coppola’s skewed vision of Kurtz’s tyranny and his death have been used for a very different perspective on the aspect of his death altogether.

References

Coppola, Francis Ford. Apocalypse Now. United Artists, 1979.

Kimbrough, Robert. “A Norton Critical Edition of Heart of Darkness.” (2002).

LaBrasca, Robert. “Two visions of “The Horror!”.” Heart of Darkness (1988): 288–293.

Singh, Frances B. “THE COLONIALISTIC BIAS OF” HEART OF DARKNESS”.” Conradiana 10.1 (1978): 41–54.