Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)

Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)

Mr. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as a demigod among native Africans. Kurtz meets with the protagonist, Marlow, who returns him to the coast via steamboat. Kurtz, whose reputation precedes him, impresses Marlow strongly, and during the return journey Marlow is witness to Kurtz's final moments.

The character of Kurtz has been open to literary discussion since Heart of Darkness was published in 1902. It was the direct inspiration for the Kurtz character in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, itself based on the novella.

Contents

In the Novella

Kurtz is an ivory trader, sent by a shadowy Belgian company into the heart of the Congo Free State. With the help of his superior technology, Kurtz has turned himself into a charismatic 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.

His mother was half-English, his father was half-French and thus "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz.” As the reader finds out at the end, Kurtz is a multitalented man–painter, musician, writer, promising politician (ironically enough, an extremist). 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 all the brutes!" 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. Kurtz dies on the boat with the last words, "The horror! The horror!"

Interpretations

Kurtz belongs to a series of Romantic heroes whose suppressed or sublimated desires lead them to a fractured psyche. Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein, and Prometheus in Prometheus Unbound, as well as the central figure of Edgar Allan Poe's "William Wilson" all ended up displacing their evil into other creatures. Besides these, the character of Kurtz does not resist a Nietzschean interpretation, being a sort of Übermensch whose fractured persona resembles a kind of Dionysian genius, fully aware of his desire for sex and utter solitude.

Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War film, Apocalypse Now, centers on the protagonist's mission to find and kill a particular Colonel Kurtz, based on Conrad's character, who has gone rogue far up a river, deep in the Southeast Asian jungle. The cast of the film were instructed by Coppola to read Heart of Darkness.

Timothy Findley's 1993 novel, Headhunter, features Kurtz's escape from Heart of Darkness and subsequent reign of terror over the city of Toronto as the psychiatrist-in-chief at the Parkin Institute.

Cathy Nolan's novel, Staff, centers on the protagonist, a female version of Kurtz (named Judith), and her attempt as a supposed demigod to corrupt children. She does this by slowly crushing the spirits out of them by being unbelievably passive-aggressive, yet without attracting the attention of adults. The novel is reminiscient of Peter in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

The Russian claims that Kurtz has "enlarged [his] mind". This may be a nod to Tocqueville's Democracy in America where in Vol. 3 Chapter 22 Tocqueville refers to war as always "enlarging the mind of a people".

In 1991 Australian Author and Playwrite Larry Buttrose wrote and staged a theatrical production of "Kurtz" (based on 'Heart of Darkness') with the Crossroads Theatre Company, Sydney.[1] The play is scheduled to be broadcast as a radio play to Australian radio audiences in August 2011 by the Vision Australia Radio Network,[2]and also by the RPH - Radio_Print_Handicapped_Network across Australia.

Basis

Georges Antoine Klein may have been the real-life individual upon whom Joseph Conrad based the character Kurtz.[3] (The name Klein means 'small' in German, while Kurtz means 'short') Klein was an employee of the Brussels-based trading company Société Anonyme Belge pour le Commerce du Haut-Congo, and died shortly after being picked up on the steamboat Conrad was piloting. He is buried in Tchumbiri on the Congo.

In his history King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild suggests that Leon Rom was one of the inspirations for the Mr. Kurtz character, citing references as the heads on the stakes outside of the station and other similarities between the two.

Conrad also expressed an admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writings, in particular the stories The Beach of Falesá and The Ebb-Tide, as well as the non-fiction account of Tembinok' of the Gilbert Islands that appeared in In the South Seas. All three texts contain megalomaniacs who manipulate their circumstances and remote settings to assert power over others. It is widely believed that Conrad drew influence from these characters, as well as Stevenson's plot lines, when writing Heart of Darkness.

Notes and references

  1. ^ The Playwrights Database: Larry Buttrose
  2. ^ http://www.visionaustralia.org/info.aspx?page=749
  3. ^ Conrad, Joseph (September 1997). Heart of Darkness. Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. Penguin Putnam. pp. 4–5. ISBN 0-451-52657-0. 

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