Kurtz (Heart of Darkness) - in The Novella

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.

Kurtz's 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. 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, 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!"