![]() ![]() ![]() It is tempting to see Heart of Darkness as a masterfully constructed parable on human nature (witness Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation, in which the action was transposed to south-east Asia) but as historian Adam Hochschild has pointed out in King Leopold's Ghost, about the king's rape of the Congo, Conrad himself was quite clear that it was based on specific events he had witnessed, saying it was "experience… pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case". With Marlow present, his chilling last words are "The horror! The horror!" The dying Kurtz is taken aboard the boat (along with a prodigious quantity of ivory), but he does not survive the journey back downstream. When Marlow finally reaches Kurtz's camp, he discovers a scene of unimaginable depravity. ![]() The further upstream Marlow gets, the more intense the sense of impending danger, with cryptic warnings and a bloody ambush ratcheting up the tension. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |