The Depths of the Heights: Reading Conrad with America’s Soldiers

Abstract

For one who has spent his entire adult life in academic settings, a trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, seems like an inverted Heart of Darkness: instead of going deeper in toward the horror, the horror, you ascend to space and light. The skies are open above you, and the air, while there's not much of it at six thousand feet, is clean and clear. You find yourself constantly looking up, thinking large thoughts or no thoughts at all. To the west are the Garden of the Gods and the immensity of Pike's Peak. Just to the north is the campus of James Dobson's vast Focus on the Fam ily, a corporate headquarters, gift shop, and museum of its own history. A couple of miles north from there is the New Life Church founded by the now-disgraced and departed Ted Haggard, both mall and amuse ment park, filled with milling youth groups on their way to another large room, another inspiring message delivered by a guy in blue jeans who was lost and now is found. And just over there, at the end of that road that winds toward the Rockies, and below the spot where those tiny figures are gently descending to earth (no matter when you happen to glance up), is the gleaming, geometrical Air Force Academy, where I was invited to lead a seminar?on Heart of Darkness, as it happens?with faculty members from humanities departments. Going up Academy Boulevard was like traveling to some primal nexus of mystic patriotism, military service, and evangelical Christianity. I found