" Not only does this prove how deranged Kurtz was as a person but it also shows that to him the natives were just in the way of his goal, and the best way to deal with it would be to eliminate them. In addition to this textual evidence, in the article Crimes against humanity by Maier-Katkin she states: "Murder, disease, famine, forced labor, torture, maiming, and sadistic cruelties were elements of international trade of ivory and rubber."(p.584)This is another point that solidifies that racism played a huge part in both stories, one can even argue that it came with the job. In a like manner Garrett Stewart writes in his article Lying as Dying in Heart of Darkness, "To plumb the native is to come up against the innate, apart from all cultural or racial demarcations" (p.319) This means that trying to straighten the natives in terms of their manners and behavior would be out of the norm because of their race, therefore they must remain in a lower class compared to the Whites. Perhaps during the time period that this occurred this was the reasonable and normal thing to do, Colonel Lucas from "Apocalypse Now" says it best, "Out there with the natives it can be a temptation to be god".
"I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it" said Willard. Marlow and Willard had to overcome this idea of the unknown. Neither of the men knew what they were getting themselves into, who or what they were going to encounter, and most importantly how their new environment would treat them. In the movie, before Willard started the mission, his superior; Colonel Lucas, tells him "This mission does not exist or will it ever exist". After receiving this information, Willard was unsure of what that mission would consist of, if it didn't even exist. As for Marlow the fact that he didn't know if he would be able to survive the hardships that nature provides and what was inside the dark jungle was part of his fight against the "Unknown".
