d, Kurtz gives Marlow everything he is looking for, but in an unexpected way. Kurtz teaches Marlow the lesson with his last words: "The horror! The horror!" (68). These words are Kurtz's judgment on his own life. He is barbarous, unscrupulous, and possibly even evil. However, he has evaluated his life and pronounced judgment. Marlow sees Kurtz "open his mouth wide---it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him..." (59). Kurtz takes everything he has done in his life into himself and pronounces a judgement upon it. "He had summed up--- he had judged [. . .] the horror!" (68). Kurtz's last words are his way of teaching Marlow the essence of a name. A name is not merely a label. It is one man's own judgment of an isolated event. However, unlike the Europeans who judge based on principles they acquired through social conditioning, Kurtz teaches Marlow to look inside himself and judge based on his own subjective creeds. While Marlow is recounting the story, he says to his comrades: He must meet that truth with his own true stuff---with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags---rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No. You want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row---is there? Very well. I hear, I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. (38) Marlow has learned that objective standards alone will not lead him to recognize the reality of life. One can not depend on another's principles to find reality because they have not had to bear the pain and responsibility of creating it. Principles are acquisitions, which, like other things we acquire r...
