the jungle, they were, at the same time, 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 in himself and has lived off the land like an animal. He has been exposed to desire, yet cannot comprehend it. His horror tells us his mistakes and that of Europe's. His mistakes of greed for ivory, his mistakes of lust for a mistress and his mistakes of assault on other villages, were all established when he was cut 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 and humanitarian basis for his attack on colonialism. Conrad's Kurtz mouths his last words, "The horror! The horror!" as a message to himself and, through Marlow, to the world. However, he did not really explain the meaning of his words to Marlow before his exit. Through Marlow's summary and moral reactions, we come to realize the possibilities of the meaning rather than a definite meaning. "The message means more to Marlow and the readers than it does to Kurtz," says William M. Hagen, in "Heart of Darkness and the Process of Apocalypse Now." "The horror" to Kurtz became the nightmare between Europe and Africa. To Marlow, Kurtz's last words came through what he saw and experienced along the way into the Inner Station. To me, Kurtz's horror shadows every human, who has some form of darkness deep within their heart, waiting to be unleashed. "The horror that has been perpetrated, the horror that descends as judgment, either in this pitiless and empty death or in whatever domination there could be to come" (Stewart 366). Once the horror was unleashed, there was no way of again restraining it....
