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Heart Of Darkness Essay

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The story follows a sailor named Marlow on his journey through the Congo to retrieve the infamous Kurtz. Marlow arrives at Central Station to find the ship he is supposed to captain is damaged and he must wait to sail. Here he observes the inefficiency, corruption, and brutality that comes with imperialism. When they arrive at the Inner Station, run by Kurtz, they find that the man is mad and dying. It also becomes quite evident that Kurtz had lost his humanity, “Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over... He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land...” Kurtz dies on the journey back his last words being, “The Horror! The Horror!”. Marlow falls ill, and nearly dies …show more content…

That is what makes Heart of Darkness an effective horror story. Once again, a man played god and paid dearly for it. Frankenstein through the loss of his loved ones, but Kurtz lost his life to his obsession. While dying Kurtz entrust his personal documents and pamphlets to Marlow. Once Marlow examines these pamphlets along with the Russian trader’s tale it becomes clear that Kurtz led the natives to believe that he was a god so that he could succeed, “and by ¬and ¬by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had in-trusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. ... He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might as of a deity.” Kurtz grew power hungry and committed horrible acts, and the longer he stayed in the Congo the more his health failed. Eventually dying in that ‘Heart of Darkness”. Kurtz is not the only monster. The longer the men are in the Congo the less they

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