What is Colonel Kurtz's philosophy?

We are hollow people,
Stuffed animals,
Come together in one place, –
Straw in their heads!
Dry voices rustle,
When we whisper together,
Without meaning to rustle,
As if the grass is dry,
It's like there are big rats in an old basement
They scurry over broken glass.
An image without features. A shadow that doesn't move.
Colorless. Powerlessness. Paralysis.
You with your eyes open
They stepped over it without flinching,
To another realm of death,
Remember us (if you remember):
We are not strong-minded dead,
We are hollow people,
Stuffed with straw.

Movie OperatorVittorio Storare recalled working on the painting:

“The role of Brando symbolizes the dark side of civilization… He couldn't sit and talk like you and me. That would be unnatural. He was supposed to be an idol.”

The independent film magazine “25-frame” gives the following description of the image of Colonel Kurtz:

Colonel Kurtz is a kind of superman who has solved the riddle of war and finally subdued thousands of others to his will, but is so entangled in himself that there is only one way to unravel this tangle. He is the perfect soldier, the pride of the American army. Wasn't Kurtz the quickest to understand the futility of war? It is impossible to defeat an entire nation like this, he realized this, for which he was anathematized by his own country. Kurtz understood everything much more acutely, understood it in his own way, understood it especially. The temptation to become a God is great — the film explores the nature of power in all its glory. What does a person become when he is not surrounded by all the conventions of the ordinary world? What does he turn into when he gains unlimited power, and even in the aspects of such animal worship?

To understand the philosophy, in addition to analyzing Kurtz's monologue in the film, you also need to pay attention to multiple references . “

I've seen the same horrors you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have the right to kill me. You have that right… but no one gave you the right to judge me. It is impossible to describe in words what is necessary for those who do not know what horror is. Horror… Horror has a face… and you have to make friends with horror. Horror and deadly fear are your friends. Because if they don't, they will become real enemies that you will be afraid of. Fearsome enemies!“- That is, subjugate fear and horror to yourself, if this is not the case, and the whole life will be fear of fear. Something in the style of look your fear in the face. Horror i.e. what you have to see or/and do not want to see you need to see and make friends, so as not to be afraid and not to be afraid.�

This country is dead.
This is a country of thorns and cacti.
Here stone statues stand,
Here dead hands are raised to them,
Begging for forgiveness
Under the twinkle of a flying star.
And it happens in another realm of death,
That you'll wake up alone,
At the hour when
You tremble with tenderness,
And the lips are ready to kiss other lips,
And only mumble prayers to the broken stone?

“I remember when I was still in the special forces…it seems like it was thousands of years ago. We went to a village to get vaccinations for our children. When we gave our children polio shots, we left. An old man caught up with us, sobbing. We went back to where they had been after us. They cut off each vaccinated child's hand, in which the injection was made. They were piled up. Lots of baby hands. And I remember… I … I… I began to cry, to sob like an old grandmother. I wanted to pull out my teeth, I didn't know what to do. And I wanted to remember what I saw, so that I would never forget it. Never forget it! ” The figurative expression thousands of years ago suggests that since that time there has been a great spiritual growth of the colonel in the knowledge of himself. The one who came to do good contributed to evil in the end, without realizing it and soon regretting it. Then he was a typical soldier, like all Americans, and since then he has understood the essence. In this example, the colonel seems to show the gap and conflict between a person of the Western world and the third/fourth world. So Kurtz realized that the Vietnamese are much stronger because of the willpower that allows them to commit atrocities while remaining human in everyday life, and became what he was when he met Willard.

“_IN our garden
Lots of thorny bushes.
We do round dances there.
In the morning, at five o'clock in the morning.”
Between the idea
And reality,
Between Intent
And act,
A shadow falls.
_For thine is the Kingdom.
Between the design
And creating,
Between the experience
And responsiveness,
A shadow falls.
Life is very long.
Between the desire
And coitus,
Between the rush
And existence,
Between an entity
And the occurrence of,
A shadow falls.
_For thine is the Kingdom
The Anchor Is Yours…
Life is very…
The anchor is yours…
“_Thus came the end of the universe,
Thus came the end of the universe,
Thus came the end of the universe, –
Yes, not with thunder, but with a sob!_”

“And then I realized… it was as if a diamond had pierced me…as if I had been shot in the forehead with a diamond bullet. I thought, my God… this is brilliant, brilliant. It is this will that is needed to do such a thing. Perfect, true, full, transparent, pure. And suddenly I realized that they were stronger than us, because they were able to withstand this. They weren't monsters, they were soldiers, perfectly trained soldiers. And these soldiers fought without malice, they had families, children, their hearts were filled with love… so that they had the strength…the strength…to do this. If I had 10 divisions of such soldiers at my disposal, our problems in Vietnam would quickly be over. We need soldiers who not only have a sense of morality, but are also able to use the primal instinct to kill without any emotion. Without the slightest emotion and without judgment… without judgment! Because it is our judgments that destroy us!»” �Representatives of Western civilization think and reason a lot, thus attaching so much importance that it prevents them from achieving their goals and makes them weak against the background of third-world people. But at the same time, they are not inhumane and also love and have morals, which, however, is associated with the ” instinct to kill without any emotions.” After the story, Kurtz hints that he wants to die, and asks Willard to find his son and tell him about his father's actions. “I'm worried that my son might not understand what I was trying to become. And if I get killed, I'd like someone to go to my house and tell my son everything, everything I've done, everything I've seen. Because I hate the stench of lies more than anything else in the world. If you understand me, Willard, you will do me this favor.“Next, Willard kills Kurtz with a machete, the last words of that:” horror … horror…”. They are also repeated in the last seconds of the movie. In general , it should be understood that the authors of the film are torn between liberal anti-colonialism with its characteristic sense of guilt towards the aborigines (Rosenbaum complains that the film ignores the Vietnamese point of view on events) and semi-fascist worship of the charismatic leader. The duality between the narrator and Kurtz remains theoretical, for Kurtz himself is nothing more than a dead-speculative abstraction.Coppola claimed that many episodes of the film-the attack on the boat with arrows and spears, for example-were made out of respect for the spirit of Conrad's novella and, in particular, for the criticism expressed in it of the foundations of modern civilization and progress. Although European colonization of Africa is replaced in the film by American intervention, this does not change the meaning of the book's universal message. �(�ru.wikipedia.org)

Colonel Kurtz's desktop Books — The Bible, The Golden Bough by George Fraser, From Ritual to Romance by Jesse Weston. My favorite poem is T. S. Eliot's” The Hollow Men “(parts of which I used HERE in my answer), where Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a constant backdrop, and allusions to J. R. R. Tolkien's novel are also important. Conrad's “Heart of Darkness”. Conrad's hero dies with the words: “Horror! Horror! ” epigraph from Conrad-these words in the novel the black servant tells about the death of his master – “brawler” and “stuffed blockhead” at the same time. “Give it to Old Guy” – with these words, children beg on November 5, the day of celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder plot of 1605. On this day, stuffed effigies of the main conspirator Guy Fawkes are dragged through the streets, and then burned at the stake. The contiguous realm of death is death, while the ” ghost realm of death “is the life of”hollow people”. I also hope that after reading the poem, you will get the impression that Eliot experienced a sense of his alienness to American culture, which, in his opinion, due to its historical youth is devoid of deep spiritual roots. Eliot's unacceptable dominance of utilitarianism and practicality, which form the social psychology of his countrymen, led him to speak of America as a realm of “vulgarity”, which was the most visible manifestation of the “barbarism” that he considered the essence of his era. Fear of “barbarism” and a growing distaste for modern life, which rejected culture as a living tradition, largely determined the entire nature of Eliot's work.�At the beginning of the poem, the author depicts people devastated and broken by an unknown force. They are like stuffed animals stuffed with straw:The poem contains many expressions such as” contour without form”,” shadow without color”,” gestures without movement ” – the author consciously returns the reader to the poetry of the XVII century, in which poets, thanks to such artistic means, described the struggle of man, its disagreement with the world. In the second part of the work the author tries to solve the mystery of people's posthumous life and after death life is just as hopeless and lonely?In the fourth part, there is hope for the resurrection of the soul through patience.The fifth and final part of “Empty People” begins with a hopeless journey to the dead land of cacti: The ending of the poem sounds like a dedication of a person's life to God. Eliot asserts the content of human existence:The meaning of the poem still remains integral to the content: “Stuffed with straw”, soulless “empty people” do not have the right to survive.

One Answer

vladislav_mirischovskyi says:

2022-11-02 at 8:02 pm
We are hollow people,
Stuffed animals,
Come together in one place, –
Straw in their heads!
Dry voices rustle,
When we whisper together,
Without meaning to rustle,
As if the grass is dry,
It's like there are big rats in an old basement
They scurry over broken glass.
An image without features. A shadow that doesn't move.
Colorless. Powerlessness. Paralysis.
You with your eyes open
They stepped over it without flinching,
To another realm of death,
Remember us (if you remember):
We are not strong-minded dead,
We are hollow people,
Stuffed with straw.

Movie OperatorVittorio Storare recalled working on the painting:
- “The role of Brando symbolizes the dark side of civilization… He couldn't sit and talk like you and me. That would be unnatural. He was supposed to be an idol.”
The independent film magazine “25-frame” gives the following description of the image of Colonel Kurtz:
- Colonel Kurtz is a kind of superman who has solved the riddle of war and finally subdued thousands of others to his will, but is so entangled in himself that there is only one way to unravel this tangle. He is the perfect soldier, the pride of the American army. Wasn't Kurtz the quickest to understand the futility of war? It is impossible to defeat an entire nation like this, he realized this, for which he was anathematized by his own country. Kurtz understood everything much more acutely, understood it in his own way, understood it especially. The temptation to become a God is great — the film explores the nature of power in all its glory. What does a person become when he is not surrounded by all the conventions of the ordinary world? What does he turn into when he gains unlimited power, and even in the aspects of such animal worship?
To understand the philosophy, in addition to analyzing Kurtz's monologue in the film, you also need to pay attention to multiple references . “

I've seen the same horrors you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have the right to kill me. You have that right… but no one gave you the right to judge me. It is impossible to describe in words what is necessary for those who do not know what horror is. Horror… Horror has a face… and you have to make friends with horror. Horror and deadly fear are your friends. Because if they don't, they will become real enemies that you will be afraid of. Fearsome enemies!“- That is, subjugate fear and horror to yourself, if this is not the case, and the whole life will be fear of fear. Something in the style of look your fear in the face. Horror i.e. what you have to see or/and do not want to see you need to see and make friends, so as not to be afraid and not to be afraid.�

This country is dead.
This is a country of thorns and cacti.
Here stone statues stand,
Here dead hands are raised to them,
Begging for forgiveness
Under the twinkle of a flying star.
And it happens in another realm of death,
That you'll wake up alone,
At the hour when
You tremble with tenderness,
And the lips are ready to kiss other lips,
And only mumble prayers to the broken stone?

“I remember when I was still in the special forces…it seems like it was thousands of years ago. We went to a village to get vaccinations for our children. When we gave our children polio shots, we left. An old man caught up with us, sobbing. We went back to where they had been after us. They cut off each vaccinated child's hand, in which the injection was made. They were piled up. Lots of baby hands. And I remember… I … I… I began to cry, to sob like an old grandmother. I wanted to pull out my teeth, I didn't know what to do. And I wanted to remember what I saw, so that I would never forget it. Never forget it! ” The figurative expression thousands of years ago suggests that since that time there has been a great spiritual growth of the colonel in the knowledge of himself. The one who came to do good contributed to evil in the end, without realizing it and soon regretting it. Then he was a typical soldier, like all Americans, and since then he has understood the essence. In this example, the colonel seems to show the gap and conflict between a person of the Western world and the third/fourth world. So Kurtz realized that the Vietnamese are much stronger because of the willpower that allows them to commit atrocities while remaining human in everyday life, and became what he was when he met Willard.

“_IN our garden
Lots of thorny bushes.
We do round dances there.
In the morning, at five o'clock in the morning.”
Between the idea
And reality,
Between Intent
And act,
A shadow falls.
_For thine is the Kingdom.
Between the design
And creating,
Between the experience
And responsiveness,
A shadow falls.
Life is very long.
Between the desire
And coitus,
Between the rush
And existence,
Between an entity
And the occurrence of,
A shadow falls.
_For thine is the Kingdom
The Anchor Is Yours…
Life is very…
The anchor is yours…
“_Thus came the end of the universe,
Thus came the end of the universe,
Thus came the end of the universe, –
Yes, not with thunder, but with a sob!_”

“And then I realized… it was as if a diamond had pierced me…as if I had been shot in the forehead with a diamond bullet. I thought, my God… this is brilliant, brilliant. It is this will that is needed to do such a thing. Perfect, true, full, transparent, pure. And suddenly I realized that they were stronger than us, because they were able to withstand this. They weren't monsters, they were soldiers, perfectly trained soldiers. And these soldiers fought without malice, they had families, children, their hearts were filled with love… so that they had the strength…the strength…to do this. If I had 10 divisions of such soldiers at my disposal, our problems in Vietnam would quickly be over. We need soldiers who not only have a sense of morality, but are also able to use the primal instinct to kill without any emotion. Without the slightest emotion and without judgment… without judgment! Because it is our judgments that destroy us!»” �Representatives of Western civilization think and reason a lot, thus attaching so much importance that it prevents them from achieving their goals and makes them weak against the background of third-world people. But at the same time, they are not inhumane and also love and have morals, which, however, is associated with the ” instinct to kill without any emotions.” After the story, Kurtz hints that he wants to die, and asks Willard to find his son and tell him about his father's actions. “I'm worried that my son might not understand what I was trying to become. And if I get killed, I'd like someone to go to my house and tell my son everything, everything I've done, everything I've seen. Because I hate the stench of lies more than anything else in the world. If you understand me, Willard, you will do me this favor.“Next, Willard kills Kurtz with a machete, the last words of that:” horror … horror…”. They are also repeated in the last seconds of the movie. In general , it should be understood that the authors of the film are torn between liberal anti-colonialism with its characteristic sense of guilt towards the aborigines (Rosenbaum complains that the film ignores the Vietnamese point of view on events) and semi-fascist worship of the charismatic leader. The duality between the narrator and Kurtz remains theoretical, for Kurtz himself is nothing more than a dead-speculative abstraction.Coppola claimed that many episodes of the film-the attack on the boat with arrows and spears, for example-were made out of respect for the spirit of Conrad's novella and, in particular, for the criticism expressed in it of the foundations of modern civilization and progress. Although European colonization of Africa is replaced in the film by American intervention, this does not change the meaning of the book's universal message. �(�ru.wikipedia.org)

Colonel Kurtz's desktop Books — The Bible, The Golden Bough by George Fraser, From Ritual to Romance by Jesse Weston. My favorite poem is T. S. Eliot's” The Hollow Men “(parts of which I used HERE in my answer), where Dante's “Divine Comedy” is a constant backdrop, and allusions to J. R. R. Tolkien's novel are also important. Conrad's “Heart of Darkness”. Conrad's hero dies with the words: “Horror! Horror! ” epigraph from Conrad-these words in the novel the black servant tells about the death of his master – “brawler” and “stuffed blockhead” at the same time. “Give it to Old Guy” – with these words, children beg on November 5, the day of celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder plot of 1605. On this day, stuffed effigies of the main conspirator Guy Fawkes are dragged through the streets, and then burned at the stake. The contiguous realm of death is death, while the ” ghost realm of death “is the life of”hollow people”. I also hope that after reading the poem, you will get the impression that Eliot experienced a sense of his alienness to American culture, which, in his opinion, due to its historical youth is devoid of deep spiritual roots. Eliot's unacceptable dominance of utilitarianism and practicality, which form the social psychology of his countrymen, led him to speak of America as a realm of “vulgarity”, which was the most visible manifestation of the “barbarism” that he considered the essence of his era. Fear of “barbarism” and a growing distaste for modern life, which rejected culture as a living tradition, largely determined the entire nature of Eliot's work.�At the beginning of the poem, the author depicts people devastated and broken by an unknown force. They are like stuffed animals stuffed with straw:The poem contains many expressions such as” contour without form”,” shadow without color”,” gestures without movement ” – the author consciously returns the reader to the poetry of the XVII century, in which poets, thanks to such artistic means, described the struggle of man, its disagreement with the world. In the second part of the work the author tries to solve the mystery of people's posthumous life and after death life is just as hopeless and lonely?In the fourth part, there is hope for the resurrection of the soul through patience.The fifth and final part of “Empty People” begins with a hopeless journey to the dead land of cacti: The ending of the poem sounds like a dedication of a person's life to God. Eliot asserts the content of human existence:The meaning of the poem still remains integral to the content: “Stuffed with straw”, soulless “empty people” do not have the right to survive.
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