Kurtz (Heart of Darkness)
Kurtz | |
---|---|
First appearance | Heart of Darkness |
Created by | Joseph Conrad |
In-universe information | |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | Ivory trader |
Nationality | British |
Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's 1899 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 novella's protagonist, Charles 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.
In the novella
Kurtz is an ivory trader, sent by a shadowy Belgian company into the heart of an unnamed place in Africa (generally regarded as 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. Kurtz's general manager is envious of Kurtz and plots his downfall.
Kurtz's mother was half
However, over the course of his stay in Africa, Kurtz 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!" Kurtz ultimately was changed by the jungle. At first he wanted to bring civilization to the natives, as his painting shows, but by the end he wants to "exterminate all the brutes!"
Basis
Kurtz's persona is generally understood to derive from the notoriously brutal history of the so-called "
A personal acquaintance of Conrad's, Georges Antoine Klein, may also have been a real-life basis for the character.
Conrad also expressed admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific Ocean 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[by whom?] that Conrad drew influence from these characters, as well as Stevenson's plot lines when writing Heart of Darkness.
In other works
Film
In the 1958 loose adaptation for the CBS television anthology series Playhouse 90 Kurtz was played by Boris Karloff. This version uses the encounter between Marlow and Kurtz as its final act, and adds a backstory in which Marlow had been Kurtz's adopted son.
Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed[9][10] Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (1979) centers on the protagonist's mission to find and kill the renegade Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando), based on Conrad's character, who has gone rogue far up a river, deep in the Cambodian jungle. The script acknowledges Heart of Darkness as a source of inspiration, and the last words of Colonel Kurtz, "The horror! The horror!", echo those of his namesake in the novel.
In the mostly poorly received
The 2020 documentary
Games
The video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010) features a character in many ways similar to Kurtz, a man who refers to himself as Caesar. Caesar was initially a diplomat who went out into the post-apocalyptic world in an attempt to both increase the knowledge of the now tribal inhabitants and learn from their cultures to facilitate understanding in the wasteland. Caesar eventually went mad with power after becoming the de facto leader of one such tribe and led them in dismantling other tribes who then assimilated into his group. Now, he is the ruler of Caesar's Legion, a vast army of tribals modeled after the Roman Empire. Like Kurtz, Caesar is an educated, charismatic figure who is worshipped as a god by his underlings; in Caesar's case, his followers believe him to be the reincarnation of Mars, the Roman god of war.
The video game Spec Ops: The Line (2012), another modernized loose adaptation of Heart of Darkness (set in a ruined Dubai), has a similar Kurtz figure named Colonel John Konrad.
Literature
Timothy Findley's novel Headhunter (1993) 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.
The poem "
In Josef Škvorecký's novel The Engineer of Human Souls Kurtz is seen as the epitome of exterminatory colonialism.
Manga
Who Fighter with Heart of Darkness is an anthology that includes a manga adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Like Apocalypse Now the setting is changed to WWII era Burma, about a soldier named Maruo sent to hunt down the renegade Colonel Kurutsu.[14]
References
- ^ Quod.lib.umich.edu
- ^ Bloom 2009, p. 16
- ^ Hochschild, Adam: King Leopold's Ghost. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998, pp. 98; 145,
- ^ Sherry, Norman (1971). Conrad's Western World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 95.
- ^ Coosemans, M. (1948). "Hodister, Arthur". Biographie Coloniale Belge. I: 514–518.
- ^ Firchow, Peter (2015). Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 65–68.
- ^ Firchow, Peter (2015). Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. University of Kentucky Press. pp. 67–68.
- ISBN 0-451-52657-0.
- ^ "Apocalypse Now (1979)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ "Apocalypse Now (1979) Awards". IMDb. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ "Heart of Darkness (1993)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ "Reviews & Ratings for Heart of Darkness (TV)". IMDb. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
- ^ "Arena: African Apocalypse". BBC. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
- ^ "Who Fighter with Heart of Darkness (manga)". Anime News Network.
Sources
- Bloom, Harold, ed. (2009). Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. ISBN 978-1438117102.