Wide context

Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)

/^t/The character from The Heart of Darkness had himself chosen to leave the civilised world; the way of life he decided to go fulfilled some unexplained desires and expectations of his. Moreover, being a perfect stranger in a completely unknown land, owing to his own qualities and talents he built his position as a leader and maintained it. One may argue that it was not the first case when a stranger became a king and that it could not take much to impress the primitive people of Kongo, but thinking of the adjustments Kurtz had to make and his seclusion, the outcome is not the effort of an average man. He was able to control a large territory and an unbridled group of the local people, his "achievements" made an impression on a man like Marlow whose profession was similar and who could, at least partly, understand the man's endeavours. Nevertheless, Marlow changed his opinion about Kurtz when he finally discovered what the man had been doing. The mysterious tales about an unconstrained state in the middle of a jungle made the sailor admire the dictator, but a closer look at it transformed the esteem into disappointment. In this way, a genius became a maniac.