Kurtz's Representation In Heart Of Darkness

Kurtz's Intended Representation in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the most known novels in English literature. The story begins when Marlow, who works for a Belgian company, went in a journey to the heart of Africa as a steamship captain. Through his journey he heard the name of Kurtz for the first time. Then the name repeated many times which made Marlow, who is our narrator in addition to other unknown narrator, interested to know about Kurtz. Kurtz works for the company as an ivory trader in the Congo which was at that time one of Belgium's colonies. According to Marlow Kurtz was the ideal English man, or as what he called him a "remarkable man", who holds the banner of civilization. Marlow's dream

She carried her head high… She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her (75,

While the intended is civilized and powerful, but the interior kinship with the black African is what scares him because this will one day end the superiority of the white European on others, Sara Nassab states that:" The post-colonial readers regard intended as a foolish person, who mourns a man that is known to her. Kurtz's mistress lives independently without Kurtz. The African woman signifies the fact that Africa does not need salvation from other territories" (38). Another representation of women is stereotyping them, once Marlow talks about women in the novel he positioned them in their own world that they imagine, and no need for them to know about the real life in which they could make it worse:

Did I mention a girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely. They—the women, I mean— are out of it—should be out of it. We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be out of it. (59) That stereotyping of women in Conrad's Heart of Darkness leads to the lie that Marlow committed to the intended, Kathryn Marie Smith argues that the lie of Kurtz is not the lie that he tells to the intended by telling her that last words pronounced by Kurtz was her name, but she states that the visit to the intended from the beginning is a lie because, as she mentioned, Marlow confesses that he does not know even