It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: "The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes!"
The trip described was tumultuous and disappointing, characterized by moments of rapid excitement interspersed with slower, more difficult experiences. As the narrator reflects while heading back to San Francisco, there is a sense of disillusionment. It seems that, overall, the experience did not live up to expectations, prompting a search for a suitable way to summarize this journey.
In the quest for a fitting epitaph, the narrator draws inspiration from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," evoking the haunting phrase "The horror! The horror!" This reference underscores a deeper commentary on the darker aspects of the experience, linking it to broader themes of despair and the harsh realities encountered during the trip, reinforcing an overwhelmingly negative sentiment.