Failure of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness Essay: The Failure of Kurtz

In the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, many different points of views of different topics were taken. For me I was mostly interested in knowing and finding out why or how come did Kurtz fail or thought he failed, and what external forces and conflicts caused him to consider his life a failure. Now I'm in a small excavation to unfold the answer or answers that would allow me and others to understand Kurtz more.

One reason that caught my attention was the part about why Kurtz came to Africa, which as I understood that he wanted to come and leave as someone big, someone that had been able to accomplish something big, and than he would be able to have all the right to married his love one. But when he knew that was the end of his life and he had nothing else to give, he might have felt like all that he had try working for, came down to nothing, and he was not even able to go back and see his lady and show her all the hard work that he had done just for her.

Another reason that I think that might have been another reason why Kurtz might have consider his life a failure is that he might have learned that all his work that he had done has been done for nothing, all the he had accomplish in Africa was going to be nothing. What made me think of this was when Marlow said this "....nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat ...."(p. 154). The entire quote made you try to feel how would it be to die like Kurtz did, that is how I interpreted, how much you have put in your life, but all of that won't matter to anyone anymore, that he is just like everyone else, and he has not been able to become someone special.

My last explanation, for why Kurtz might have consider his life a failure would be he might not have actually consider it that maybe he just sees that life is just the way it is, that you are born, you live and then you die, "I am lying here in the dark waiting for death"(p.