the fence posts.Africans bound with thongs that contracted in the rain and cut to the bone, had their swollen hands beaten with rifle butts until they fell off. Chained slaves were forced to drink the white man's defecation, hands and feet were chopped off for their rings, men were lined up behind each other and shot with one cartridge,wounded prisoners were eaten by maggots till they died and were then thrown to starving dogs or devoured by cannibal tribes (Meyers 100).The colonizers enslaved the natives to do their biding; the cruelty practiced onthe black workers were of the white man's mad and greedy rush for ivory. "Theunredeemable horror in the tale is the duplicity, cruelty, and venality ofEuropeans officialdom" (Levenson 401).Civilization is only preserved by maintaining illusions. JulietMclauchlan, author of "The Value and Significance of Heart of Darkness," statedthat every colonizer in Africa is to blame for the horror which took placewithin.Kurtz's moral judgment applies supremely to his own soul, but his final insight is all encompassing; looking upon humanity in full awareness of his own degradation, he projects his debasement, failure, and hatred universally. Realizing that any human soul may be fascinated, held irresistible, by what it rightly hates, his stare is "wide enough to embrace the whole universe," wide and immense.... embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe (Mclauchlan 384).The darkness of Africa collides with the evils of Europe upon Kurtz's last words. Kurtz realized that all he had been taught to believe in, to operate from, wasa mass of horror and greed standardized by the colonizers. As you recall inConrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz painted a painting releasing his knowledge ofthe horror and what is to come. A painting of a blindfolded woman carrying alighted torch was discussed in the book. The background was dar...
