How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #37
"'[…] Who was not his friend who had heard him speak once?' she (the Intended) was saying. 'He drew men towards him by what was best in them.' She looked at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,' she went on […]." (3.61)
The Intended puts great store by Kurtz’s words, believing that they lured men to him and earned him his admiration from all mankind. She is naïve about the true motivations of men which are often far darker and more self-serving.
Quote #38
"'No!' she [the Intended] cried. 'It is impossible that all this should be lost – that such a life should be sacrificed to leave nothing - but sorrow. You know what vast plans he had. I knew of them, too – I could not perhaps understand - but others knew of them. Something must remain. His words, at least, have not died.'
'His words will remain,' I said." (3.68-69)
Words, it is suggested, are the only things that remain forever, that can capture memory and not fade away into nothingness.
Quote #39
"'To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.
'Repeat them,' she murmured in a heart-broken tone. 'I want–I want–something – something – to – to live with.'
I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. 'The horror! The horror!'" (3.80-82)
That Kurtz’s last words drum repeatedly in Marlow’s mind reinforces the idea that words last forever.