Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)

Kurtz is a character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. He is an ivory trader, sent by a shadowy Belgian company into the heart of the Congo. With the help of his superior technology, Kurtz has turned himself into a demigod of all the tribes surrounding his station, and gathered vast quantities of ivory in this way. As a result, his name is known throughout the region. The general manager of the company's Congo operation is jealous of Kurtz, and plots his downfall.

As the reader finds out at the end, Kurtz is a multitalented man - painter, writer, promising politician (ironically enough, a populist). He starts out, years before the novella begins, as an imperialist in the best tradition of the white man's burden. The reader is introduced to a painting of Kurtz's, depicting a blindfolded woman bearing a torch against a nearly black background, and clearly symbolic of his former views. Kurtz is also the author of a "pamphlet" regarding the civilization of the natives. However, over the course of his stay in Africa, he becomes corrupted. He takes his pamphlet and scribbles in, at the very end, the words "Exterminate the brutes!" He induces the natives to worship him, setting up rituals and venerations worthy of a tyrant. By the time Marlow, the narrator, 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, whereupon Kurtz dies. He passes his sickness to Marlow, who almost follows him into the grave.

The characterization of Kurtz is highly symbolic, and symbolism is essential to understanding this complex character. Darkness is archetypally symbolic of the primeval, uncivilized, violent force of the human psyche. In Kurtz's painting, it represents the impulses that benevolent imperialism seeks to tame. Kurtz's repeated association with this darkness reveals that it has reversed his plans and taken over him. When Marlow says that the wilderness runs in Kurtz's veins, that is what he means. Kurtz is also repeatedly associated with shadow, revealing that he represents Marlow's archetypal shadow. There are many descriptions of Kurtz's half-dead state; he can hardly walk, and is "no heavier than a child" in spite of his great stature. Marlow himself acknowledges that he and those around him consistently think of Kurtz predominantly in terms of voice.