The development of Marlow’s awareness of Kurtz

by Leonardo, Alice, and Franz

Marlow’s awareness regarding Mr. Kurtz

The most important, and problematic character of Hearth of Darkness is not Marlow, but the Belgian colonialist Kurtz.
When Marlow first heard about Mr. Kurtz, that he was a first class agent in Africa, he was very disappointed about this information.
At first Marlow doesn’t really know what he should think about Kurtz. The fact is that everybody seems to adore him. But Marlow has a strong personality. He does what seems right to him. He thinks about the things he does and he doesn’t do what all the others do. But he wants to know more about him, because Kurtz is for him a big secret and he wants to find out more about him, before he is making his own opinion about him.
When Marlow has got more to do with the others he finds out more and more about Kurtz. He seems to everyone a very important and somehow interesting person, but soon Marlow couldn’t hear something about Kurtz anymore, he wasn’t really interested in him, but after some time he realised that he had to be a special person, because he is a secret that Marlow wants to find out more about. He begins to study the history of Kurtz. The people talk about Kurtz. The once that want make a lot of money there seem to hate him, because he is very powerful. The once that don’t know Kurtz that much, like some workers at the station, adore him. Marlow doesn’t understand all that.

After some time, when Marlow knows more about Kurtz he gets also more and more interested in him. Because he finds out that a lot of people say bad things about him, some because they are jealous, because he is so mighty, some because he is mad and because they are happy, because they might get his job and all the money they get by doing what Kurtz did. 
Marlow is not interested in Kurtz’s job, because he doesn’t want all the money and he doesn’t want to be adored by everybody. He also wants to know more about him, because of the way he has to die. Kurtz had seemed to work all his life to be adored by everybody. But in the end everybody is just waiting for his death and they all want the ivory that he got before and the money that he earned by having all the ivory.
When Marlow meets Kurtz he has no real opinion about him. He isn’t sure if Kurtz is mad or not. But when Kurtz has told Marlow why he chose this life in the heart of darkness, Marlow does understand him more or less. Now he wants to know everything about him, to read his texts, to listen to his adventures and what Kurtz knows about the black continent. But Kurtz dies before Marlow was able to talk to him about all those things. Marlow respects Kurtz and his decisions, and also Kurtz respects Marlow, but they weren’t friends, they just had no other. 
In the end of the story, when Marlow meets Kurtz’s wife, he has realized that Kurtz was a sort of universal genius, because he had read Kurtz texts and was really fascinated.


Profile with the character of Mister Kurtz

Physically Kurtz is described as a slim, bald man with a big forehead. His deep and vibrating voice almost causes veneration among his listeners, including Marlow. He is, for the natives , a kind of wild African god or a punisher god : he went away from Europe, from the society with its rules and now lives in a wild country that, in the centuries, has never changed ; he came into the black continent with the idea to be rich with the ivory traffic but was enchanted by this place.
At first he was only the typical European man that goes in a not-civilized country, forgetting all the rules he used to observe and consider righteous.
I think that Conrad, in his book, has kind of predicted the future with the character of Kurtz , like some very important writers as George Orwell (“1984”), Aldous Huxley (“the new world”) or Jules Verne ( “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”) did, showing the typical 20th century man who seeks power so ferociously that he forgets the border line between man and beast.
Kurtz’s apparent detachment from the civilized world seems to be a meditation on the themes of colonization. In fact, in his dying moment he sighs: the horror, the horror!

“Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror -- of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision -- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 
"'The horror! The horror!' 
"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a tone of scathing contempt: 
"'Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.' 

What horror is he talking about? Naturally about those which for the first time pushed him beyond human limits: the morbid process of “merchandising” of everything in modern society.
Kurtz is not mad, he is not lost, he is not evil. His apparent madness has a precise purpose: a fundamental truth which modern man not accept. Conrad shows us a world where madness seems to be the only sane concept.

Some questions about why Marlow changed during the trip

- How does Marlow change by treating the blacks in the book in a very different way to all the other white men at the situation?

- Why is Marlow so different to all the others, although he grew up in the same way, in the same rich country as all the others who went to the Congo to explore this part of the world and it’s people?

- Why does Marlow have such a different attitude towards life then all the others; what makes him different?

- How did some events affect Marlow’s thinking and the way he treating the others?


At the end of the book you can understand that Marlow was afraid of what he liked so much at the beginning. He wanted to discover the world when he was younger and he finally found his chance in doing so by getting employed by the company. Marlow seems to be a smart man, who is sure about what he does, but entering into the company was a fault. Already at the beginning, he finds out that there must be something wrong, but till he finds out how bad everything is it is too late to return and too late to forget what he had already seen in the Congo. At the beginning of his trip he is fascinated by everything and he relay wants to know more of what he will discover and about what he will see and learn. But soon after he is getting deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness and he realises that it would have been better not to go on this trip.
Marlow expected to find out more about the Congo and to learn something there, but in the end he finds out, that this whole trip is not just one into the Congo, but into the Heart of Darkness, the darkness inside him, that he hadn’t discovered until now. So on his trip he finds out more and more abut himself, without being able to stop it. He can’t go back. He really wants to know more about it, but his mind wants to go back. It seems to be as if he is expecting a solution in the end.
On one hand Marlow seems to be ignorant. He doesn’t really like to speak with people. At least you get the impression that he is not interested in what other people think in general or what they think especially about him. That makes him interesting. He doesn’t seem to be like all the others that came to Africa. All the others are just interested in getting a lot of money without thinking of all the consequences, like killing people or destroying their life.
But Marlow is different, he doesn’t need much. He tries to get along without the help or the money from other people. 
When Marlow gives one of the blacks in the forest a biscuit, it seems as if he shows feelings. From then on you can realise more and more that he is criticizing what the others at the station do and how they treat the black people.
Marlow seems to be somewhere between the jungle of Africa and civilization, not knowing what is better. He is from London and so it’s the way he grew up that makes him think by two ways about the whole situation in the Congo, thinking about if it’s really wrong or if it really has to be like that. But Marlow is right; How the people are to the blacks in the Congo is not fair, so in my opinion Marlow must have a real strong character and a good personality, because so many other white man who worked at the same station, who were just thinking for the ivory, punch the blacks and enslave them, like they were animals, but Marlow doesn’t agree with all that. He seems to be the only one who learned exactly what he shouldn’t have learned by doing this job.
Marlow learns that the white men who look the most civilized with their clothes and ships are in the end the worst creatures. 
Marlow is the only one, who tries to see the blacks as human and not just as cheep workers, an this aspect makes him human.

By Leonardo, Alice, and Franz