Will the Real Kurtz Please Stand Up?

After reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, I found it almost impossible not to compare the characters in the novella to the actual people that we read about in Adam Hochschild's book King Leopold's Ghost. The character, Kurtz, was particularly interesting, and not just because he seemingly lost his mind in the end.

Kurtz could have very well been modeled after the officer Leon Rom. At one point, someone explains to Marlow that Kurtz believes himself to be a god to the natives, going on brutal raids in search of ivory, and he displays severed heads along the fence posts. Rom was known to display a row of severed heads around his garden. Also, a Russian man confides in Marlow that recite poetry - his own - to him, which seems odd for such a violent fellow. However, Rom was also known to partake in "gentle" activities, such as painting and butterfly collecting.


Guillaume Van Kerckhoven was also very Kurtz-like; or rather, the character Kurtz was comparable to the Force Publique officer by the name of Guillaume Van Kerckhoven. Kerckhoven didn't necessarily display a collection of severed heads, as did Rom and kurtz, but he was most certainly rumored to have a collection, and he even bragged about paying his black soldiers for every head they brought to him.


Of course, no one, save Joseph Conrad himself, knows for sure if Kurtz was modeled after any of the people he met in the Congo. But he certainly had quite a few candidates that would make wonderful models for fictional villains, seeing as how there were so many real villains present in Africa when he visited.