Heart of Darkness

The contrast between Marlow and Kurtz illuminates the inherent hypocrisy of imperialism. Marlow seems to represent the idea of "civilizing" a savage nation. Contrastingly, Kurtz is much more honest, he is not ashamed to admit that he forcefully engages in cannibalism, with out any lofty moral goals. However, this appears to be unacceptable because it portrays the Western "civilizers" as cannibalistic and equivalent on a moral scale to those they wish to civilize. Deborah Root discusses this idea in her book Cannibal Culture. According to Root, when Western imperialists project tropes of savagery and violence on exotic, or different, cultures on order to justify their own savagery and violence (imperialism). It seems that the stark contrast between Kurtz and Marlow serves to highlight this idea.