Summary
The Harlequin told Marlow that he had spent many nights listening to Kurtz speak about a variety of subjects. Marlow further learned that Kurtz was prone to wandering into the jungle with his band of native followers on ivory raids. While listening to the Harlequin, Marlow looked through his binoculars at Kurtz's quarters and discovered that the round knobs he previously saw on the posts bordering the house were the heads of native "rebels," turned inward to face Kurtz as he sat inside. Suddenly, Marlow saw a group of natives appear from a corner of the house, bearing Kurtz on a stretcher. Fearing an attack, Marlow, the Harlequin, and everyone on the steamboat stood still — until Marlow saw Kurtz's emaciated arm emerge from the stretcher and order his army to leave. The Manager and other agents laid Kurtz in his bed and delivered his belated pieces of mail.
Marlow left Kurtz's room and saw, on the bank of the river, Kurtz's African mistress, who captivated Marlow with her pride, stature, and appearance. She boarded the steamboat for a minute without speaking, lifted her arms, and then vanished into the bush. Marlow then heard Kurtz speaking derisively to the Manager from inside his room. Trying to appear nonplussed, the Manager came out of the room and told Marlow that, while Kurtz had amassed a remarkable quantity of ivory, he was low and that his ivory district would have to be closed because his method was unsound. Fearful of the Manager's intentions, the Harlequin told Marlow his suspicion that Kurtz's White rescuers were actually trying to hurt him. Recalling the overheard conversation between the Manager and his uncle, Marlow told the Harlequin that he was correct. The Harlequin then revealed that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamboat because "he hated the idea of being taken away." The Harlequin asked Marlow to guard Kurtz's reputation once he arrived in Europe, asked him for some rifle cartridges and shoes, and then left the Inner Station.
Shortly after midnight, Marlow awoke to the sounds of a drumbeat and natives reciting incantations. After hearing a "burst of yells," Marlow entered Kurtz's room and found he had escaped. He found Kurtz crawling through the grass and finally approached him. At first, Kurtz told Marlow to run and hide himself — but he then began telling Marlow that he had "immense plans" that were ruined by the Manager. Marlow listened, hoping that Kurtz would make no noise or give no sign for his men to attack. Finally, Marlow led Kurtz back to his room.
They left the Inner Station the next day. As they floated downstream, three natives covered in bright red earth shouted some form of spell; they next saw Kurtz's native mistress run to the riverbank and begin shouting something that the rest of Kurtz's 1,000 followers began repeating. The Whites on the steamboat began pointing their rifles at the shore; to avoid a massacre, Marlow began blowing the whistle to scare the natives away. Many of them ran, but the "wild woman" did not. The Whites on deck then opened fire on Kurtz's followers.
As they made their way to the sea (and Europe), Kurtz continued to talk of his ideas, plans, station, and career. Kurtz gave Marlow a packet of papers and a photograph and asked him to keep it for him, out of reach of the Manager. One evening, after repairing the engine, Marlow entered Kurtz's room and heard him whisper his final words: "The horror! The horror!" Marlow entered the mess-room and refused to meet the inquiring eyes of the Manager. 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.
Back in Brussels, Marlow's aunt tried to nurse him back to health. An unnamed representative of the Company then visited Marlow and wanted the papers that Kurtz had given to Marlow. As he did when pressed by the Manager on their voyage home, Marlow refused. He eventually gave the man the copy of Kurtz's report on "The Suppression of Savage Customs," but with the postscript ("Exterminate all the brutes!") torn off. Marlow then met Kurtz's cousin, who told Marlow that Kurtz was a great musician and a "universal genius." Marlow gave him some unimportant family letters from the packet. A journalist then accosted Marlow, eager for information about Kurtz. As they talked, the journalist told Marlow that Kurtz could have been a great politician for any party, because he had the charisma and voice to "electrify" large meetings. Marlow gave him Kurtz's report on "Savage Customs" and the journalist said he would print it.
Marlow thought it necessary to visit Kurtz's Intended — his fiancée, whose photograph Kurtz had given Marlow on the voyage home. Marlow waited for her in her drawing room until she entered, dressed in mourning. She immediately struck Marlow as trustworthy, sincere, and innocent. As she told Marlow that no one knew Kurtz as well as she, he struggled to maintain his composure, because he did not want to reveal to her what Kurtz actually became during his time in the jungle. When she asked Marlow to tell her Kurtz's last words, Marlow hesitated — and then lied, saying, "The last word he pronounced was — your name." The Intended sighed and wept. Marlow's tale is over. On board the Nellie, the anonymous narrator and the other men sit motionless. The narrator looks at the dark clouds, the overcast sky, and the Thames — which he now sees as flowing "into the heart of an immense darkness."
Analysis
Throughout Parts 1 and 2 of Heart of Darkness, Kurtz is a shadowy figure whose name is dropped at different times and whose personality and importance eludes both Marlow and the reader. Only after reading Part 3, however, does Kurtz's overall importance become clear and Conrad's design show itself; the novel is about the meeting of two men (Marlow and Kurtz) whose existences mirror each other. Ultimately, Conrad suggests that Kurtz is who Marlow may become if he abandons all restraint while working in the jungle. Part 3 emphasizes Kurtz's godlike stature to show why Kurtz became what he did and how Marlow retreats from this fate.
Throughout Part 3, Conrad stresses the absolute devotion that Kurtz inspires in his followers. The Harlequin, for example, speaks with enthusiasm when speaking of Kurtz: "He made me see things — things," he tells Marlow, and adds, "You can't judge Kurtz as you would an ordinary man." This is an important statement, because it reflects the idea that Kurtz feels he has moved beyond the judgement of his fellow man. By abandoning himself to his innermost desires and lusts, Kurtz has achieved a god-like status. Note that this god-like status is not simply an illusion in Kurtz's mind, for the heads of neighboring tribes fall prostrate before Kurtz and, more surprisingly, the very natives being forced into slavery by the Company attack Marlow's steamboat because they do not want Kurtz to leave. The sight later on of the three natives covered in earth and the "wild woman" reinforce Kurtz's godlike stature. "He came to them with thunder and lightning," the Harlequin explains, "and they had never seen anything like it." Fulfilling what Conrad saw as the wish of many Europeans, Kurtz has established himself as a violent force, ready to extract vengeance on anyone who disobeys his commands.
Ironically, however, Kurtz does not appear to fit this description physically. Pale, emaciated, and weak, he is often referred to by Marlow as a shadow of a man, a man who is "hollow at the core" and who actually longs for his own destruction. In essence, succumbing to what Marlow calls the "various lusts" that can possess any man has taken its toll on Kurtz's soul — a toll that is reflected in Kurtz's withered frame. Once a formidable tyrant, Kurtz is now "an animated image of death carved out of old ivory." As Kurtz's "wild woman" is a personification of the jungle Kurtz himself is the embodiment of the Company: a force that revels in its own power for power's sake. (Recall how Kurtz turned his canoe around after coming two hundred miles down the river; after tasting the power that his position afforded him, Kurtz could not return to the confining "civilization" of Europe.)
Besides implying the idea that Kurtz embodies the Company, the passage is important because it suggests that even men with "great plans" such as Kurtz (recall his painting and ideas about how each station should be a "beacon on the road to better things") can discover they are, in fact, exactly like the "savages" they are purporting to "save." Underneath the sheen of "civilization," there exists, in every man, a core of brutality. Many people manage to suppress this part of themselves, but Kurtz chose to court it instead. His previous beliefs and "plans" really meant nothing — there was no substance to them, which is why Marlow calls Kurtz "hollow at the core." Kurtz's report on "Savage Customs" reflects this duality — its opening pages are filled with grandiose plans for reform, but its author's true feelings are revealed in his postscript, "Exterminate all the brutes!"
It is Kurtz's abandoning all previously cherished codes of conduct and morality that strikes Marlow as so fascinating. No longer pretending to be a force of "civilization" (as the Company does), Kurtz has moved beyond the confines of modern morality and ideas about right and wrong. When Marlow says that Kurtz "had kicked himself loose of the earth," he is metaphorically implying that Kurtz broke free from the restraints of the basic morality (a sense of right and wrong) that creates order in the world — but Marlow then qualifies this idea with, "Confound the man! he had kicked the very earth to pieces." In other words, Kurtz has not created a new code of conduct or morality — he has dismissed the very idea of morality altogether. This is why Marlow cannot "appeal" to him in the name of country, finance, or even humanity. Like Frankenstein's creature, Kurtz is in the world but not of it.
The Company wants to get rid of Kurtz because he reveals the lie to their methods. He collects more ivory than any other agent because he uses absolute brute force in collecting it and never hides his real intentions behind the kind of philosophy espoused by Marlow's aunt in Part 1. The Company, however, does not want to appear "loose from the earth" like their number-one agent, which is why its representatives (the Manager and the spectacled man who accosts Marlow in Brussels about Kurtz's papers) want to ensure that Europeans never learn the truth about him. Marlow, while not admiring Kurtz's "methods," does appreciate how Kurtz was able to journey into that part of himself that he (and the rest of us) suppress. According to Marlow, Kurtz was a noteworthy man because "he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot." Kurtz is not heroic, but he is more of an adventurer than Marlow ever imagined he could be — instead of voyaging into an unknown continent, he voyaged into the unknown parts of his own soul. For this alone, Marlow feels the need to safeguard Kurtz's reputation, because no one who had not made such a journey into himself could ever possibly understand Kurtz's.
What Kurtz himself thinks of his own actions and "kicking the earth to pieces" is much more difficult to pinpoint; his final words — "The horror! The horror!" — have elicited an enormous amount of critical commentary. Marlow suggests that these words reflect Kurtz's "supreme moment of complete knowledge" — an epiphany in which Kurtz saw exactly what succumbing to his own darkness had done to him. Care should be taken, however, not to read Kurtz's finals words as an apology or deathbed retraction of his life. Heart of Darkness is not a fable, and one of its themes is that the darkness courted by Kurtz is potentially in everyone's heart — not just the one belonging to this "voracious" demagogue. Kurtz may be commenting on the force for which he has given his life, or the fact that he will not live long enough to finish his "great plans." Conrad's deliberately ambiguous choice of Kurtz's dying words allows for a number of interpretations while simultaneously refusing the reader the comfort he or she would feel in reducing Kurtz to neat categories and descriptions. Like Africa, Kurtz is mysterious, and the workings of his heart at his "supreme moment" remain mysterious as well.
Still, the only character remotely aware of what Kurtz did and what drove him is Marlow, which is why, upon his return to Europe, he finds the people there to be "intruders whose knowledge of life" is "an irritating pretence." He finds them "offensive" because of their self-assuredness in their morals and belief in the inherent "rightness" of their civilization — a "rightness" Marlow now scorns because he sees it (like the Company's wish to bring the "light of civilization" into Africa) as a façade. This is why, in the opening pages of his narrative, Marlow speaks of the Romans conquering England, which "has been one of the dark places of the earth." Marlow now understands that empires are not built without the kinds of activities he witnessed in the Congo and that the "civilization" that is held in such esteem is, in a sense, "just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a grand scale, and men going at it blind." While Marlow never wishes to abandon civilization in favor of the path chosen by Kurtz, he can no longer view it with the same enthusiasm and comfort that he did before working for the Company. Kurtz has taught him too much.
The final meeting between Marlow and Kurtz's Intended dramatizes this conflict in Marlow's heart. The Intended (who knows little about the real Kurtz) contrasts Kurtz's native mistress (who presumably knew intimately of his "various lusts") and brings to mind the duality of Kurtz's character. Dressed in mourning for over a year, she, too, suggests the complete devotion of Kurtz's followers: "For her he had died only yesterday." Her black mourning dress, "ashen halo," and dark eyes bring to mind the numerous examples of light and dark imagery throughout the novel — except that here, the images are more pronounced than anywhere else in the book. The Intended's "darkness" reflects her own sorrow at the loss of her love, but Marlow attempts to hide a greater and more threatening darkness: The truth about Kurtz.
Marlow is not deliberately trying to be sarcastic by repeating the Intended's words; the irony of the naïve Intended presuming to "know Kurtz best" is what gives Marlow's repetitions their bite.
As Marlow struggles to maintain his composure, he notices the physical and metaphorical darkness that permeates the room. He arrives at the Intended's house at dusk. At the beginning of the conversation, he notices the room "growing darker" and only her forehead remaining "illumined by the inextinguishable light of belief and love." When she begins explaining that she knew Kurtz better than anyone else, Marlow comments, "The darkness deepened" and, in his heart, bows his head before her. The truth about Kurtz — metaphorically represented in the coming of night — becomes more difficult for Marlow to hide, because the Intended's presumed knowledge of Kurtz becomes more unnerving to him as they continue. After the "last gleams of twilight" fall, Marlow even admits to feeling some "dull anger" at her naiveté, but this feeling turns to "infinite pity" when Marlow realizes the immensity of her ignorance. This is why, when asked to repeat Kurtz's final words, Marlow cannot bring himself to repeat, "The horror! The horror!" and instead tells a lie that gives great comfort to the Intended while simultaneously securing Kurtz's reputation. Despite the fact that Marlow knows that lies are wrong, he cannot refrain from telling this one, because to do so "would have been too dark — too dark altogether." As the Intended gratefully receives Marlow's lie, so Europe accepts the one it tells itself about building empires and civilizing "savages."
Glossary
ulster a long, loose, heavy overcoat, especially one with a belt, originally made of Irish frieze (wool).
the first of the ebb the start of the outgoing or falling tide.
