Wednesday
Long-time reader and valued conservative critic of this blog William McKeachie has just alerted me to a very useful article on Heart of Darkness by William Bray, a retired U.S. Navy captain and the deputy editor-in-chief of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine. While Bray voices some of my own reservations (and Chinua Achebe’s) about Conrad’s one-dimensional depictions of Africans, he says that the novella “confers a special benefit to military leaders.” Such leaders, Bray contends, “will find Heart of Darkness a helpful and enjoyable aid in navigating the complex ethical and moral terrain of warfare in two important ways.”
First, the work acts as a cautionary tale about foreign incursions that are not firmly grounded upon higher principles. Second, it shows what can happen to armed servicemen and women when such is the case.
Before elaborating, Bray takes a slight detour into Kipling’s infamous poem “The White Man’s Burden,” talking about how good intentions can go horribly wrong when a country inserts its military into the affairs of others. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow owes his post to an aunt, who is thrilled with the idea of bringing European Christianity to darkest Africa, and this is Kurtz’s initial intent as well. Bray notes that America’s own version of this is its perceived “moral obligation to vanquish tyranny and advance democracy abroad.” He adds that “[b]oth successful foreign ventures and tragic misadventures have sprung from this well of idealism”:
The democracy promotion agenda has been derided by many on the left as neocolonialism and on the right as naïve adventurism — different in nature from the rapacious European 19th-century version but still either fundamentally corrupt or just plain stupid and wasteful.
I find both positions extreme and simplistic. Nevertheless, neither should be thoughtlessly rejected any more than one should uncritically hold faith in American exceptionalism.
Using the novella to probe the reasons we intervene leads Bray to Conrad’s second important insight. The author shows the negative impact of an ill-conceived or mercenary mission upon our servicemen and women, especially when that mission goes on for years. Higher ideals are important because troop morale rests “in no small way on belief in the purpose of the mission”:
When the troop members stop believing in it, they stop trusting the leaders that sent them into harm’s way, and — as happened in Vietnam — the mission suffers, and there are long-lasting political and societal consequences.
Thus, Heart of Darkness is an important caution about “misplaced or disingenuous foreign adventurism” that fails to command belief. Kurtz from this perspective operates as a cautionary tale:
Kurtz was not a criminal or a degenerate when he arrived in the Congo. He was an idealist who believed European civilization was a force for good in the world. He studied the native people and wrote a 17-page report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. Kurtz was raised in high society and went to the best schools. It was not until he was long in the jungle and an unwitting tool of a most unholy engine of avarice that his “savagery” gained the upper hand. What happened to Kurtz? Marlow comes to learn that Kurtz had, at some point, scribbled “exterminate all the brutes!” at the end of his report to the Society.
Recall that Kurtz commits unspeakable atrocities while in the Congo. (We never learn what they are but an outward manifestation is human heads on stakes.) Bray uses the character to understand why American soldiers have gone astray, wondering how much to attribute to his own internal make-up, how much to the cynicism of Europe’s amoral plundering of African resources:
Did [Kurtz] yield to a temptation to go where most civilized Europeans dare not go — face-to-face with their own natural amoral savagery, a place where one can make oneself into a god to others and indulge in any desire? Going there and realizing one’s true nature is the ultimate horror — hence Kurtz’s final words, “the horror, the horror,” before dying in the hold of Marlow’s steamer. In Ken Burns’ 2017 documentary on the Vietnam War, novelist and war veteran Karl Marlantes (Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War) seemed to hold this view of human nature: “People talk a lot about how well the military turns kids into killing machines, and I’ll always argue that it’s just finishing school. What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them.” Conrad’s story is a journey into the savage wilderness of our own nature, where Marlow, while searching for Kurtz, discovers the lie “civilized” man indulges to justify the entire colonial project — a lie Mark Twain described as “the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”
Bray is mixed about whether America’s current engagements are turning its service members into Kurtzes. On the one hand, he believes that we are, in fact, finding ways to “inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies”:
There’s a case to be made that the U.S. military in recent decades has by many estimates prosecuted war (jus in bello) more justly than at any time in history. Smart weapons may minimize collateral damage, and military personnel observe fairly restrictive rules of engagement. Young military professionals today should not despair but be confident that — if put to the test in the most demanding combat environments — they will serve with dignity, honor, and moral courage.
In this way, Heart of Darkness is a good reminder why we have these rules. And why, to look at Donald Trump for a moment, it is so dangerous when he flouts the military command structure and celebrates and pardons alleged war criminals. I’m thinking especially of special operations chief Eddie Gallagher, who was regarded as “freaking evil” by fellow soldiers after having stabbed a captive just so he could get a photograph. According to USA Today,
Gallagher’s fellow SEALs became so disturbed with his killings of civilians that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and would also fire warning shots at civilians to prevent Gallagher from shooting at them, according to prosecutors.
If Trump were Marlow, he would have contempt, not admiration, for Kurtz’s deathbed self-assessment where he condemns himself. Marlow is impressed by “the expression of some sort of belief; it had candor, it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth—the strange commingling of desire and hate.” Trump, by contrast, finds Gallagher tickling his sadistic fantasies.
Bray mentions his own experience with a Kurtz:
When I served in East Africa in 2006, we had to initiate a command investigation of a servicemember in charge of a remote camp accused of selling medical supplies to villagers on the local black market and of illegally hunting rare, protected game. He abused the power he had been given to exploit the local population. While he wasn’t cutting off heads, left alone and relatively unsupervised for months, did he yield in a lesser way to a temptation to make himself into a god like Kurtz had? I think so.
Achebe has legitimate quarrels with Conrad’s novel, but there is more to the work than cultural identity issues. Africans no less than westerners can learn from it how cynical power grabs hollow us out. As Bray concludes,
Marlow’s journey up the Congo and Kurtz’s journey into madness retain a metaphorical reach into modern warfare. In reading Heart of Darkness, military and national security professionals should always be mindful that Kurtz is not just a fictional character — he is a warning sign.
Further thought: I so happens that one of my tennis partners is a Kurtz with combat experience. Walter Kurtz, who was a second lieutenant and bronze star recipient in Vietnam before going on to become a judge, says that, in his experience, officers make a significant difference in how their men (and now women) behave. In other words, good leadership can hold at bay the inner heart of darkness.
