The ending of Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness," is one of its most significant parts of the book. It defines the entire novel and its morals and messages in which it is trying to convey and allows the audience to develop our own personal understanding of the ending ourselves from what we perceive of the plot. We have defined the ending of the novel from when Marlow first sees Kurtz carried by "a group of men bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst". The ending highlights the main events of the novel where Marlow finds Kurtz and discovers many things about him that makes him such a well-respected man among the Company and by the "savages"." We are introduced to a society plagued with the thoughts and beliefs of imperialism as a good thing, and a way of colonising the savages where the black people were always kept unnamed and dehumanised, defined as "savages prisoners and criminals"." .
In the ending of "Heart of Darkness," Kurtz is described as a figure of "greatness" "generous mind"" and "noble heart." " but we witness as his madness stemming from his greed for ivory overwhelm his mind and begin to become physically portrayed through his sickness as a reflection upon his diseased mind where he begins to deteriorate, eaten away by the darkness which begins to surface from being away from society for too long. Because it's the eyes of civilisation that keeps humanities darkness hidden, but when surrounded by nothing but the emptiness represented through the Congo where there are no rules to distinguish between right and wrong, the inner darkness surfaces, leading to prevailing flaws of human nature. This is followed by the slow agonizing journey of Kurtz's to his death where he says his final line, "the horror, the horror".".
As they continue their journey back from the Congo, we watch the fall of Marlow where we see that Kurtz's was a character which was not able to escape the emptiness of the Congo and which Marlow has just made it out in time, but still falling sick to the effects due to the exposure to the darkness.