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.