ts 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 on the black workers were of the white man's mad and greedy rush for ivory. "The unredeemable horror in the tale is the duplicity, cruelty, and venality of Europeans officialdom" (Levenson 401). Civilization is only preserved by maintaining illusions. Juliet Mclauchlan, author of "The Value and Significance of Heart of Darkness," stated that every colonizer in Africa is to blame for the horror which took place within. 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, was a mass of horror and greed standardized by the colonizers. As you recall in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz painted a painting releasing his knowledge of the horror and what is to come. A painting of a blindfolded woman carrying a lighted torch was discussed in the book. The background was dark, and the effect of the torch light on her face was sinister. The oil painting suggests the blind and stupid ivory company, fraudulently letting people believe that besides the ivory they were taking out of...
