As a result of his adaptations Kurtz also unintentionally became a perfect metaphor for the shadow archetype. Kurtz is the person within us all that whispers into our ears things that scare us about ourselves. There is never any release from the Kurtz that lives within us but instead one only needs to acknowledge his existence and listen to him fairly, take into account the meaning behind his words. This is the part that the actual Kurtz struggled with instead of contemplating his shadow he accepted it without question and allowed for it to control him; therefore, Kurtz should not represent an enlightened individual but instead the shadow itself. The shadow archetype represents the ignored and repressed versions of ourselves. The goal of individuation …show more content…
There was certainly nothing ordinary about Kurtz however there was nothing godly about him either. The reason people adorned him with lavish words and memories was because Kurtz acted as a cipher for the desires they felt were out of reach for themselves. They lived through Kurtz with every account that they gave of him, through identification defense mechanism they found Kurtz to live through. It could also be argued that Kurtz wasn’t the god they made him out to be but instead was just someone to add excitement into their mundane lives. Throughout the book it almost seems like Kurtz is not a solid human at all only a metaphor or idea. Marlow makes a numerous amount of remarks that allude to Kurtz’s inhuman nature; such as, comparing Kurtz directly to the ivory he was in possession of, observing that Kurtz’s name “means short, [and] the name was true in everything else in his life—and death” (Conrad 76) even though Kurtz appeared to be a very tall man, and mentioning how Kurtz seemed