Marlow has a supernatural fascination with Kurtz for much of the book. It isn't until Marlow actually meets him that his god-like aura is diminished. Marlow saw Kurtz as a European apostle who went into the heart of darkness with good intentions but was seduced into pure evil. Kurtz becomes a metaphor for "fallen man". Marlow quickly discovers that whatever Kurtz might have been was now dead,

His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.

Kurtz does not really have much time to establish a relationship with Marlow. Kurtz meets Marlow and might have felt shades of his former self in Marlow. By that time it is too late. Kurtz has descended into madness which, ironically, gives him the clarity to see what he has become.

The horror! The horror!"