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GATE 2025 XH2 (English) – Question 48

Critical Theories and Intellectual Traditions · Theoretical Paradigms: Structuralism, Marxism, feminism, existentialism, poststructuralism, modernism, postmodernism, new historicism, postcolonialism, posthumanism · 2 marks · Multiple choice

“I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. . . . He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: ‘The horror! The horror!’”
Which political and existential condition can be inferred from the above passage in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness?

  1. The degeneration of the corrupted white man recognizing the moral evil of imperialism
  2. The state of shock on witnessing the economic disaster and commercial catastrophe suffered by the unnamed Belgian company
  3. The sense of an ending due to the imminent failure of a new nation state
  4. The fear of an emerging apocalypse caused by an ecological disaster

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Correct answer: (A) The degeneration of the corrupted white man recognizing the moral evil of imperialism

Explanation

Kurtz's dying cry shows a man who sank into savagery and then saw the moral evil of what imperial greed had made of him.