Colonialism and Imperialism - European Ideals in Heart of Darkness and

Holl proclaimess of European Ideals Exposed in bone marrow of Darkness and The Hollow hands Kurtz occupies a peculiar position in Conrads warmheartedness of Darkness and T.S. Eliots The Hollow Men. Mr. Kurtz, he dead is the epigraph to The Hollow Men. Eliot draws an perspicuous allusion to Kurtz, the morally hollow man in Heart of Darkness. Left to his own devices, Kurtz commits appalling acts such as shrinking human heads and performing sore sacrifices. Kurtz is armed with only the dubious sense of moral superiority of his tillage and the desire to civilize the natives (Dahl 34). This front quickly crumbles when faced with the noble soon enough savage ways offered by Africa. The crumbling front only leaves a hollow void of desired intellections and morals. This hollowness is what Eliot builds on to develop his own idea of hollowness. Kurtz is an apt example of the hollowness of European ideals that Eliot wanted to expose. T.S. Eliots The Hollow Men uses Conrads Kurtz to e nforce the idea of hollowness found in contemporary occidental thought, because Kurtz is a model European and represents the ideas of the modern Western Everyman. Kurtz is a first European thinker and citizen. He is the product of idealistic, progressive, and optimistic thought (Dahl 34). Kurtz is a Renaissance man, being a musician, a painter, a journalist, and a everyday genius (71). So well does Kurtz perform all his duties, Marlow never figures show up Kurtzs true occupation. Marlow can envision Kurtz as a painter who wrote for the document as well as a journalist who could paint (71). Kurtzs public talent extends to the field of politics, where he could have been a splendid attracter of an extreme party, in fact of any party (71). Kurtz was highly respected... ...rmany and later on in Vietnam and Cambodia (Anderson 404). In all likelihood, Heart of Darkness was just a prelude to the atrocities that could be committed with the continuance of European thought as it was. Eliot explicitly says one of the themes to Part V is the present decay of east Europe (Roessel 55). Eliot built on this theme of moral hollowness in The Hollow Men, by having Kurtz and his actions be representative of contemporary European thought. works Cited Anderson, Walter E. Heart of Darkness The Sublime Spectacle. University of Toronto Quarterly 57(3) (1998) 404-421. Dahl, James C. Kurtz, Marlow, Conrad and the Human Heart of Darkness. Studies in the Literary Imagination 1(2) (1968) 33-40. Roessel, David. Guy Fawkes Day and the Versailles calm in The Hollow Men. English Language Notes 28(1) (1990) 52-58.