iMedia: "The End" - The Doors

(Lyrics to this song can be found here.)

iMedia: “The End” – The Doors

When I first chose this song I was completely unaware that it was the opening to the Heart of Darkness-based movie Apocalypse Now. The Doors are classic, and having this song in my never-ending mental iTunes library, I immediately knew it perfectly epitomized not only the novel itself, but also deeper character and plot themes.

Heart of Darkness is plagued by themes of ironic savagery: the twisted truth that those deemed as “civilized,” aka the Europeans, are actually more savage than the natives themselves. It also touches on “the horror, the horror” of colonialism and brutal foreign dominance. These are ideas are specifically demonstrated in the following lines from the song.

“This is the end

My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end

I’ll never look into our eyes again

Can you picture what will be

So limitless and free

Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand

In a desperate land

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain

All the children are insane

All the children are insane”

These lines touch on both the colonialist theme of the book, as well as Kurtz’s character. The lines “our elaborate plans” and “desperately in need of some stranger’s hand” clearly are referencing European dominance and unjustly taking over African lands. However, I think that not only do “elaborate plans” reference those plans of colonists, but also those of Kurtz. On page 65 of Heart of Darkness, when Marlow is with Kurtz in the forest, Kurtz says, “’ I had immense plans… I was on the threshold of great things.’” So the plans mentioned in the song also could relate to those of Kurtz, who while although a tad mad, did have a glorious dream he never really got to fulfill.

In my opinion, the most haunting lyrics from the song are “all the children are insane.” Clearly this can be interpreted in as many ways as anyone who read the book or knows about European colonialism can come up with, but I took this also as a reference to Kurtz. Toward the end of Kurtz’s life, Marlow compares his mind to that of a child, needing to be cared for yet always in a world of their own. From this idea, I took that the children were just another way of referencing all of the colonial men who came to the Congo and were hypnotized by the primitiveness of the surrounding nature. When entranced by this, Kurtz, like many men I supposed, truly went insane. It’s pretty obvious that Kurtz has pretty much jumped of the precipice of insanity and this point, and these lyrics further reflect the irony in that.

Although the song has a slower, more hypnotic sound, this parallels the egotistical and dark lyrics that together incite a creepily suspicious feeling for the listeners. The son’s ambiguity not only reflects that of the entire book, but also Kurtz as a character, as most of what we readers learn about him toward the beginning of the book are second-hand and often biased notions of his personality and actions. This is also repeated at the end of the book when Marlow is visited – and visits – all of the people who Kurtz knew, and we still cannot get a completely crystal clear picture of who he really was.

This feeling of eery complexity is one that I got throughout the book. Whether it be reading the suspicious trek down the river, the natives repetitive shrills and ceremonies, or the colonial intentions, reading Heart of Darkness left me with more questions than answers, and “The End” by The Doors just does the same. I am left to wonder whether the darkness serves metaphorically for the truth, or for blindness. Maybe both. But this song puts it into perspective. The characters and themes of Heart of Darkness constantly push the complicated, twisted, hard to accept truth at its readers. Kurtz especially is walking irony, a mish-mosh of civilization and destruction, but also blatant savagery. However, it is “The End” that oddly answers this confusion with its own added confusion, leading me to accept that there really is no answer at all. Nothing that can permeate the “heart of impermeable and impenetrable darkness.”