Conrad's affirmation is that all men are hollow, all fated to endure the condition that Eliot figures so allusively in "The Hollow Men," and all fated to be blind to their condition; all excepting those few, and Kurtz himself is one, who are able, eventually, to glimpse and face this horrifying truth. This is the force of Eliot's "We" in the opening lines; it is the "We" of all mankind, save for "Those who have crossed/With direct eyes" (lines 13-14) like Kurtz, whose dying "stare" remains to haunt Marlow: "his stare. . .wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. . . that wide and immense stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the universe" (p. 119 in Bantam; p. 149 in Signet Classics). This is the stare with which Kurtz meets the vision of ultimate truth in a "supreme moment of complete knowledge," greeting it with his final cry--"The horror! The horror!" It is the fixed stare with which Kurtz passed from life to death (p. 125 in Bantam; p. 153 in Signet Classics edition).
