Marlow and Kurtz are the only ones named because they do not hide who they are, everybody else does not see the truth, and they are the only ones who achieve enlightenment. The two men are not afraid to openly show themselves. The two epigraphs to the poem, " Mistah Kurtz — he dead" and "A penny for the Old Guy", are allusions to Conrad's character and to Guy Fawkes, attempted arsonist of the English house of Parliament, and his straw-man effigy that is burned each year in the United Kingdom on Guy Fawkes Night, 5 November.
As Marlow makes his journey up the river all he can think about is Kurtz. In this mission to find Kurtz , Marlow compares everyone he meets to him. He does this because Kurtz was able, on his deathbed, to judge what he had done was wrong. Willard succeeded in his mission only because Kurtz , himself broken mentally by the savage war he had waged, wanted Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering. Before Willard killed him, Kurtz asked Willard to find Kurtz's wife and son, and explain truthfully to them what he had done in the war.
He induces the natives to worship him, setting up rituals and venerations worthy of a tyrant. By the time Marlow, the protagonist, sees Kurtz , he is ill with jungle fever and almost dead. Marlow seizes Kurtz and endeavors to take him back down the river in his steamboat. The natives perceive Kurtz as a mythical deity and think that the guns carried by his followers are lightning bolts, symbols of power rather than actual weapons.
Marlow and the Russian trader are aware of the guns' power to kill, however, and they react nervously at Kurtz's show of force. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of letters to preserve his work and memory. He tells her Kurtz's last words were her name. Ivory which he was to collect for his company, became his passion. Next to ivory, his greatest concern was his love for the girl he proposed to marry. The wilderness seemed to have consumed his flesh and spirit, and transformed his whole being completely.
Ultimately Mr. Kurtz became extremely greedy. A time came when Mr. Kurtz wanted to keep all the ivory for himself instead of allowing the company to take it away from him. But greed is only a small example of evil in this man. In certain other respects, he became the very embodiment of evil. It tells us the experiences, and brutality of Europeans, which Marlowe has seen through his eyes.
It also sums up the experiences and deep-rooted evils in the hearts of civilized people. Their hostility makes them blind to their surroundings. In addition, the ultimate downfall of Kurtz was due to his own evil actions during his years spent in the Congo for the European Company. He know that Kurtz could kill men with impurity. He could with the natives over to his own side and kill those who rebelled again his authority.
He could roam the jungle alone in search of ivory. Once he was ready to kill the Russian because he did into surrender to him a small amount of ivory. Kurtz has developed a strong sense of power in the region in which he lives.
Thus, He shows his sense of ownership of things by repeatedly saying in the following way:. At this point Marlow feels that if Mr. Kurtz owns everything around hi, he himself is owned by the power of darkness. In other words Mr. Kurtz who has taken a high seat among the devils of the land, seems to Marlow to be a man who has become wholly evil.
Thus he has become an embodiment of evil. In this early life Mr. Kurtz had been a man of sound view and an enlightened outlook upon life. On one occasion he had written a pamphlet in which he had argued that the white man had a great responsibility towards the savages who recognized his superior abilities and gifts. Having lived among them, Mr.
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