No Straw Men

Of Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the novelist Joyce Carol Oates writes that what “releases his . . . self is simply distance from home, the freedom of a white man’s power over those whom he considers his racial ‘inferiors,’ whose influence over him is subliminal (2). Yet while distance, “freedom,” and the subliminal influence of the Congolese all conspire to bring about Kurtz’s logical fall from “grace,” Kurtz is not entirely helpless or blameless. For by the nature of his second-handed character, he invites certain self-disintegration. In Ayn Rand’s definition, a “second-hander” derives his sense of self from others. For others constitute the second-hander’s motive power; others are the primary object of his wishes, efforts, and ambitions. Thus, the second-hander, in his basest form the power-luster, is eager to accept the so-called white man’s burden to “civilize” primitive nonwhites.

Kurtz, in both his life and befitting death, typifies such megalomania: having arrived in Africa in the late 19th century to civilize the natives, Kurtz is instead converted by them to savagery. While from his company he receives impassioned accolades and the showiest perquisites, he lives a contradiction: by coveting the souls of others, he fatally and inevitably abandons his own.

The estrangement Oates writes of refers to the crucible that is Africa, which “had found [Kurtz] out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance” (Conrad, 98). Like the airtightness of Communism in Ayn Rand’s We the Living, the jungles of the Belgian Congo in Heart of Darkness foster a milieu conducive only to devastation and death. In particular, the pomp and circumstances castrate Kurtz psychologically and render him physically ill. And once madness of this magnitude takes holds, it becomes a beast that will stop at nothing short of its own demise.

To wit, as Marlow describes the effect of the jungle upon Kurtz: “The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like . . . an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and ­lo!—he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh and sealed his soul to its own by . . . some devilish initiation” (Conrad, 81). Thus situated, Kurtz’s actions reflect his new world. Here, profligacy has replaced self-control as the norm, and so the quest for ivory, having developed into an irresistible urge, is now a force Kurtz cannot resist.

Yet those who, like the district manager, undertake this expedition into the heart of darkness without moral reflection and only to sack ivory from the Congolese, manage to subsist. Similarly, Marlow, who is aloof though he does acknowledge the horrific reality of these expeditions, survives to relate the narrative. But those, like Kurtz, who confront the hypocrisy of imperialism and fail consequently to change, are themselves swallowed up by the darkness they had hoped to penetrate. Such introspection simply overwhelms Kurtz, who, unable to bear its weight, self-destructs.

Hence we see the link between madness and power. Kurtz’s follies reflect his raging hegemony; his swelling need to gratify his lusts propels his actions. Everything—despite its rationality and morality—which he wants, Kurtz pursues. And once Kurtz samples the fruit of power, there is no going back. In this way, having “kicked himself loose of the earth” (Conrad, 112), the beast that Kurtz becomes would rather die than be caged (amid civilized folk in Europe).

Of course, while Kurtz still retains “power” over the Congolese, instead of his enlightening them, they enlighten him: he takes “a high seat amongst the devils of the land” (Conrad, 82). As Lord Acton affirmed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The consequence, Conrad writes, is “that there was something wanting in him—some small [sic] matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence” (Conrad, 97-98). In other words, Kurtz sells his soul for a bloody pseudo-freedom, on which he draws to destroy everyone round him, including himself. While he does hold a leash round the Congolese, he inevitably learns, as does Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, that “a leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.”

Kurtz is considered to be a “universal genius” (Conrad, 122) and an “emissary of pity, and science, and progress” (Conrad, 41): he was a politician, writer, artist, orator, poet, ivory producer, musician, and chief agent of his company’s Inner Station. Yet, as Marlow affirms, “The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own” (Conrad, 82). For Kurtz scatters his self everywhere and nowhere: he is “hollow at the core” (Conrad, 98), a being without integrity and even identity—a true second-hander. Indeed, a man accomplishes nothing if he attains power and prominence at the expense of pandering to others. “It is not he that triumphs, it is not his ideas and standards,” Ayn Rand observed. “It is only his physical frame” (71). Such is the effect of the subliminal influence Oates cites.

Moreover, Kurtz’s rapacious struggle isn’t even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—a stamp of approval, not his own. He can find joy neither in the struggle nor in its completion. This final realization of the consequences of his life finds expression, as it must, in Kurtz’s dying wailing—“The horror! The horror!” (Conrad, 108).

Bibliography

Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer (New York: Signet, 1997).

Oates, Joyce Carol, Introduction, in Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer (New York: Signet, 1997).