?????? The novel Heart of Darkness, written by Joesph Conrad, is an allegorical story about the power of man over nature, of how a man can be seduced by the industrial artificial life of civilization and how nature's power over man is an ethereal, unstobbable, and unconquerable force?? - one which must be fought, lest the adventurer be driven insane with the burden of the knowledge that it bestows upon him.
?????? Avatar: The Last Airbender has chosen to create an analogy of this through the Fire Nation's empirialism in contrast to the Jeong Jeong the Deserter's disavowal of his former military life. ?? In an episode of the first season called "The Deserter", Aang and his companions encounter a former Fire Nation military commander living in exile in the jungle.?? There, Jeong Jeong lives in a life of austere simplicity and is followed by tribesmen, natives of some kind, that revere him and hold him as their leader.??
?????? Through both actions and his situation, Jeong Jeong is the embodiment of Kurtz, the European administrator sent to the Congo to "conquer" the territory from the "African savagery", but ends up becoming one of the natives through his choices to put their welfare over the welfare of the British trading companies.?? Though still a charismatic man when Marlow (the protagonist) meets him, Kurtz is no longer the well-dressed white man who has come to "fulfill his burden" as he was when first deployed by the trading companies.?? Instead, he now understands how sacred the jungle and the people are.?? Like Kurtz, Jeong Jeong too was once deployed by his masters to destroy the culture and heritage of the other nations, and like Kurtz, Jeong Jeong realized the evil of what he was being told to do.?? Jeong Jeong chose to rebel against his orders, and fled into hiding, living a life of austere simplicity, but with a grace which suggests that a greater meaning lies beneath his feral exterior.??
?????? Found through the help of a Russian fur trader formerly in the employ of a Dutch company but now a devoted follower to the teachings of Kurtz, Marlow finds Kurtz living among the natives; just like the Russian trader, Chey, a subordiante of Jeong Jeong, leads Aang's party to Jeong Jeong.???? As with Kurtz, Jeong Jeong is a leader who commands the loyalty of a tribe of "natives" of a certain jungle.?? Though Jeong Jeong does not display skills in painting or flute-playing as did Kurtz, Jeong Jeong's poetic and profound explanations to Aang about the basics of firebending implies his understanding into the intricasies of the world and his appreciation for them.????
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?????? At the commencement of the novel Heart of Darkness, Marlow is given the task of seeking out and bringing back Kurtz, relieving him of his station due to what his superiors see as an ailment and a digressing inability to accomplish his assigned tasks.?? While Aang may not be seeking to put an end to Jeong Jeong's meditations in the jungle, he does come to Jeong Jeong with the request of being taught firebending, and like Marlow is first rebuked from his petition, but later accepted.?? As Marlow stays in Jeong Jeong's company longer and longer, he becomes closer to the people, to him at first foreigners, the more he understands the natural beauty of the land.?? With Aang, it is his appreciation of firebending and its dangers that he, like Jeong Jeong, comes to understand - it's all-consuming destructive power.
?????? Moreover, the theme of the destructiveness of fire, which is the counterpart to nature's raw beauty, is emphasized by Commander Zhao and his destructive lack of disregard for the balance that must be strived for by those who wish to live in the world.?? Traveling up the Congo River, Marlow's crew are attacked by a group of natives who attempt to scare them off with toy weapons - spears, bows, and arrows.?? In response, the ignorant crew open fire on the natives, driving them away. ?? Just as in Heart of Darkness, in Avatar, Zhao reacts to the natives' attempts to scare him off with spears and javelins with a reprisal of devastating blasts of fire, burning with abandon the jungle forests in order to show the "superiority" of his civilization to that of the wilderness, displaying the where the true evil and the true savagery lies.??
?????? Though the relationship between Heart of Darkness and the "The Deserter" was established, the question must be asked of why the relationship was set up in the first place.?? The answer deals with the entire plot of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", that being Aang's quest to arrest the Fire Nation's conquest of the world, and free it from the oppression of the industrial age nation.???? In essense, it is a parable story of the dangers of a people who strive solely the superiority of their people, regardless of the cost that it has on all others, a theme that has echoed throughout the history of the world.
