sees black men dying under trees They are chained and starved He says they are Nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation Nearby a French warship fires into the forest Marlow says about it Incomprehensible firing into a continent This is pure evil It is violence without reason It is cruelty without sense Empire here is not in order It is murder and waste Evil in the Central Station At the Central Station Marlow finds his boat broken Three months pass in repair In that time he hears the name of Kurtz again and again He learns that the Manager and Brickmaker care only for ivory The Brickmaker calls Kurtz an Emissary of pity science and progress But Marlow knows this is a lie The truth is greed The evil here is not open killing It is envy rivalry and selfish fear Evil wears the mask of progress The Manager fears that Kurtz may replace him The Brickmaker seeks to rise by flattery and false reports Neither cares about Africa nor the suffering of the natives Their main concern is position promotion and survival within the Company Evil here is not only outside in violence but inside men s minds as jealousy and rivalry Evil in the Inner Station At last Marlow reaches the Inner Station The Russian trader says Kurtz sends in as much ivory as all the others put together Kurtz is worshipped like a god Skulls are on stakes around his house This is evil at its height Kurtz began as an idealist Now he kills without limit He loses all restraint Here evil is power without law It destroys both the natives and Kurtz himself Evil in Kurtz s Last Words On the return journey Kurtz dies His last words are The horror The horror This cry is the full truth of evil Kurtz sees what he has done He sees the empire He sees himself The horror is greed cruelty and the darkness of the human soul Back in Europe Marlow meets the Intended She asks about Kurtz s last words Marlow lies He says The last word he pronounced was your name Evil here is hidden again Europe keeps its mask But Marlow and the reader know the truth Conrad treats evil as the true heart of the empire In Brussels evil hides under white walls In the Outer Station it kills without sense In the Central Station it whispers lies of progress In the Inner Station it makes Kurtz a god of death At the end Kurtz names it The horror The horror Conrad s novel shows us that the deepest evil is not Africa It is human greed and the empire itself