orall, author of "Conrad and Coppola: Different Centres of Darkness," explains Kurtz's loss of his identity.Daring to face the consequences of his nature, he loses his identity; unable to be totally beast and never able to be fully human, he alternates between trying to return to the jungle and recalling in grotesque terms his former idealism. Kurtz discovered, A voice! A voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of his heart.... But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying, fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power. Inevitably Kurtz collapses, his last words epitomizing his experience, The horror! The horror! (Dorall 306). The horror to Kurtz is about self realization; about the mistakes he committed while in Africa. The colonizers' cruelty towards the natives and their lust for ivory also is spotlighted in Kurtz's horror. The white men who came to the Congo professing to bring progress and light to "darkest Africa" have themselves been deprived of the sanctions of their European social orders. The supposed purpose of the colonizers' traveling into Africa was to civilize the natives. Instead the Europeans took the natives' land away from them by force. They burned their towns, stole their property, and enslaved them. "Enveloping the horror of Kurtz is the Congo Free State of Leopold II, totally corrupt though to all appearances established to last for a long time" (Dorall 309). The conditions described in Heart of Darkness reflect the horror of Kurtz's words: the chain gangs, the grove of death, the payment in brass rods, the cannibalism and the human skulls on the fence posts. Africans bound with thongs that contracted in the rain and cut to the bone, had their swollen hands beaten with rifle but...
