Explanation: “The last word he pronounced was—your name.”
Or,
“It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head.”
Exp. This extract has been taken from Joseph Conrad’s short but famous novel Heart of Darkness. Here Marlow describes the circumstances under which he tells a lie to Kurtz’s fiancée, the Intended, and his feelings at that moment.
When Marlow returns to Brussels and meets Kurtz’s Intended, she speaks highly of Kurtz. Marlow is so wonderstruck and overwhelmed by her unwavering faith in Kurtz’s goodness that he dares not reveal the dreadful truth to her. The girl subjects Marlow to intense spiritual torment when she asks him about Kurtz’s last words.
Telling a lie is a grave moral offence. Yet on this occasion, faced with the transparent brilliance of the girl’s faith in Kurtz and her firm conviction that Kurtz had needed her more than anything else, Marlow cannot bring himself to reveal the disillusionment in which Kurtz had died. Kurtz’s actual last words—“The horror! The horror!”—still echoes in Marlow’s ears and seems to pervade the very atmosphere, but he cannot utter them.
Controlling himself, Marlow tells the girl that the last word Kurtz pronounced was her name. The girl breaks into a terrible cry in which perfect triumph and inexpressible misery are strangely blended: “I knew it—I was sure!”
Marlow is stunned by the girl’s response and feels that he may not have done full justice to Kurtz. Yet he cannot accept the moral responsibility of shattering the girl’s illusion and destroying her hold on life. He even feels that he might be punished by God for telling a lie—that the roof of the house might collapse upon him before he can escape—but nothing happens.
Ultimately, Marlow feels that, in the face of the girl’s absolute faith and devotion to Kurtz, he has acted rightly in withholding the truth from her.
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