Find out how Joseph Conrad presents the character Kurtz in 'Heart of Darkness'How does Conrad convince us that Kurtz has the 'nature of a supernatural being'?Heart of Darkness is an important novella in terms of pre-1914 literature and is considered by many to be one of the most important books in literature. In 1890 Conrad sailed up the Congo River, so the novel was written with a good understanding of his surroundings and personal experience of the colonialism and oppression that was a major part of Africa in the late 1800s. Although slavery had been abolished in most places, in those days slavery was still a big part of African life due to the many European countries fighting for the prospect of ivory and land and when they did get land they enslaved the Africans keeping them to Africa to help them with the ivory trade or ship them to Europe to become slaves there. In the novel Conrad presents Kurtz as a mystical being, a god almost to the natives, but he also shows him as an evil and sinister man with a "heart of darkness". He does this not by presenting Kurtz as a human being but as a figure. an 'earth vapor'. Conrad also guides the reader by not meeting Kurtz until the end, the rest of the book is based on people's stories about Kurtz and what he did, which leads us to believe he is a supernatural being. The role of the narrator in The Novel is a key part of what makes the novel so appealing because it is the narrator Marlow who has experienced it all, even though at the beginning of the tale there is another narrator who sets the scene. The main narrator also talks about Marlow in a strange way, stating that he was sitting in a way that "resembled an idol." This infers that Marlow is a very wise and very powerful figure. He also talks a lot about light and darkness: "the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of spotless light." Only darkness in the west. Meditating on the upper reaches, he grew gloomier every minute, as if irritated by the approach of the sun.' This excerpt paints a very vivid picture in the readers' minds: it talks about getting closer to Africa every minute and the evil that waits there as if irritated by its presence..