(C) "Guber" on SomethingAwful.com

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/misspelled-movies-part-2.php?page=3

Site of However Often I Feel Like!

Go check out www.riverofdarkness.com . It's pretty cool, and I think you'll understand why.

An Immense Darkness. Roll Credits. (HOD 5)

The end of HOD is freaky. Let me start by getting that out there. Now, on to business.

In an ominous generalization about all of humanity, Marlow left me feeling generally deperessed and disheartened about the human race as an entity. The closing paragraph also made me glad to live in a structured society. Sure, an organized, structured, "cultured" society has its flaws, but after reading HOD, look at the alternative! I'll take unspoken yet mandated conformity over emaciated wispy darkness anyday. The fact that Kurtz could go from a model citizen to an empty shell of a person just because of exposure to an environment without moral or ethical boundaries is almost shocking considering one wouldn't necessarily give thought to such a topic. Furthermore, it is really only the environment combined with the slowly manifesting corruption of his compatriots that led Kurtz to such a consumed demise.

Gen. Walter E. Kurtz, Consumed in darkness.

I've lost track. (HOD post 4)

DISCLAIMER: I've forgotten exactly which section this is supposed to be about, so I'm going to talk about something relatively relevant. Kurtz. Yeah.

The character of Kurtz has been calling out to the bitter cynic inside of me. He just keeps getting built up. His legacy and reputation have made him out to be a divine character; an All-American good ol' boy who could do no wrong (a la Ewan McGregor as young Ed Bloom in Tim Burton's "Big Fish.") That in and of itself has sent up a red flag for me, especially considering the subversive mission that this group of adventurers are on. For starters, nobody is truly so perfect that they can fully live up to an over-inflated reputation (obviously, which is why it's called over-inflated). Secondly, we have seen througout this book people be affected by the unlimited qualities of their own freedoms. This brings to mind the old addage, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Because there is really nobody in place to stop any one person from becoming too powerful, there is literally no limit to the horrors and atrocities one could get away with. Sure, sounds like fun to be self-proclaimed dictator of your own community, but when atrocities become so vast that a novel as god awful as "Heart of Darkness" has to be written about it, something has to be done (only half-joking, mainly the part about the book. It's just really not my type of literature.) Anyways, it is almost reverse-foreshadowing for Kurtz's character to be built up so far just to have the physical manifestation of the legend be "a vapor expeled from the earth." Kurtz is a curiosity.

Untamed Beast (HOD part 3)

One of the more interesting comparisons by Conrad is the savage nature of the jungle to an untamed savage beast. While on the boat, Marlow looks out at the coastline and describes the untamed land as untamed, as opposed to the conquered beast that is Europe. It's interesting to look at the parallels between the nature of the land and the inhabitants therof. For example, Europe (specifically England) was seen as a conquered, domesticated animal (for lack of a better term), and thus the English were tamed, civilized beings who practice self-restraint. On the contrary, because Africa was seen as a wild, savage, living entity, the inhabitants are viewed as such. This can be tied to the comparison between the darkness in both the metaphorical and literal senses. It is almost as though the land is savage in the metaphorical, and the natives are the literal representation of this.