Quote 5
Kurtz: “The
horror, the horror.”
These are Kurtz’s last words, uttered
after Willard brutally slaughters him with a machete and repeated
as the film fades to black at its end. The words revisit a monologue
Kurtz delivers to Willard earlier in the film, intimating that if
horror is not made to be one’s friend, it becomes “an enemy to be
feared.” Kurtz’s last words—also spoken by Kurtz at the end of Conrad’s
novella Heart of Darkness—are enigmatic and can
be taken to indicate several different outcomes. Critics generally
agree, however, that these words signify Kurtz’s final acceptance
of the horrors in which he has participated through the Vietnam
War, as well as the horrors he has produced independently of the
U.S. military machine. He dies a broken, conflicted, tormented man,
ready to give his life away. His last moments become moments of
clarity, and his tone is one of shock: while he acknowledges his
actions, he is appalled by the atrocities he has committed. With
these final utterances, Kurtz at last accepts the evil present in
his soul and welcomes the promise of some semblance of peace in
death.
