For the majority of the novel, Kurtz is merely an idea, a voice in Marlow’s head that speaks to him with increasing volume and limitless wisdom. The novel Hearts of Darkness, by Paul Lawrence, moves the events of the novel to England in 1666. However, the most interesting thing about Kurtz is that most of the information we know about him is second-hand, and thus, for most of the book, his character is revealed by what others say about him. Similarly, Kurtz in the book “Heart of Darkness” has a mysterious aura around him, one that suggests ambition as well as malice. The heart of darkness corrupts even the most idealistic of men. Kurtz, a man once endowed with charm and European worldliness, crawls from the jungle a broken man, a representation of the rawest form of humanity. Kurtz could not distinguish the difference between truth and reality. A trader of ivory in Africa and commander of a trading post, he monopolises his position as … Eliot's 1925 poem The Hollow Men quotes, as its first epigraph, a line from Heart of Darkness: "Mistah Kurtz – he dead." Kurtz Character Timeline in Heart of Darkness The timeline below shows where the character Kurtz appears in Heart of Darkness . So, if Kurtz was caught by lust of his inner darkness, he was also captured by the gloomy revenge of the outer wilderness. He went after ivory, the shadow, and forgot of the real happiness of life which existed merely in living peacefully with nature. He also represents the hypocrisy of the white man’s claims of civilizing the savages. He represents the western man’s greed and commercial mentality. As true as everything else, which means … complete false. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are … FreeBookSummary.com . One of the biggest signs of madness in Heart of Darkness is the way that language and meaning don't match up at all—in fact, they're so at odds that we end up with no meaning at all. T.S. Mr. Kurtz is undoubtedly the central figure in Heart of Darkness, and he is a symbolic figure too. Kurtz is a central fictional character in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness.