k, and theeffect of the torch light on her face was sinister. The oil painting suggeststhe blind and stupid ivory company, fraudulently letting people believe thatbesides the ivory they were taking out of the jungle, they were, at the sametime, bringing light and progress to the jungle.Kurtz, stripped away of his culture by the greed of other Europeans,stands both literally and figuratively naked. He has lost all restraint inhimself and has lived off the land like an animal. He has been exposed todesire, yet cannot comprehend it. His horror tells us his mistakes and that ofEurope's. His mistakes of greed for ivory, his mistakes of lust for a mistressand his mistakes of assault on other villages, were all established when he wascut off from civilization. When Conrad wrote what Kurtz's last words were to be,he did not exaggerate or invent the horrors that provided the political andhumanitarian basis for his attack on colonialism.Conrad's Kurtz mouths his last words, "The horror! The horror!" as amessage to himself and, through Marlow, to the world. However, he did notreally explain the meaning of his words to Marlow before his exit. ThroughMarlow's summary and moral reactions, we come to realize the possibilities ofthe meaning rather than a definite meaning. "The message means more to Marlowand the readers than it does to Kurtz," says William M. Hagen, in "Heart ofDarkness and the Process of Apocalypse Now." "The horror" to Kurtz became thenightmare between Europe and Africa. To Marlow, Kurtz's last words camethrough what he saw and experienced along the way into the Inner Station. Tome, Kurtz's horror shadows every human, who has some form of darkness deepwithin their heart, waiting to be unleashed. "The horror that has beenperpetrated, the horror that descends as judgment, either in this pitiless andempty death or in whatever domination there could be to come" (Stewart 366).Once the horror was unleashed, there was no way of ...
