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Comparison Of Kurtz's Demise In Heart Of Darkness And Apocalypse Now

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Kurtz’s Demise in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is one of the most well-known stories criticizing the Western powers, specifically the way the West uses violence to control the “lesser people” of the world. Conrad’s story is considered to be based on his own journey to Africa, so his character representation, Marlow, is often shown as being more virtuous than the others around him. In contrast, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now avoids having its main characters demonstrate moral values, and instead follows Captain Willard, a mentally unstable assassin for the U.S. Army. This large plot change along with an assortment of others, allowed Coppola to avoid giving screen credit to Joseph Conrad, although …show more content…

As Kurtz knows, Willard has been given an order to infiltrate Kurtz’s group and kill him. Kurtz ultimately releases Willard and lectures him about the insanity of war. After his release, Willard debates whether or not to follow his orders as he believes in some of Kurtz’s ideas. Ultimately Willard decides to follow orders and justifies this decision in his mind by saying that believes Kurtz is insane and wants be killed by Willard: “Everyone wanted me to do it. Him most of all” (Coppola, Apocalypse Now). Willard chooses to act while the Vietnamese are having a tribal ceremony where they sacrifice a water buffalo. Willard sneaks into Kurtz’s hut and kills him with a machete. As Willard exits Kurtz’s hut, an image of Kurtz’s bloody dying face whispers the famous lines: “The horror! the horror!” (Coppola, Apocalypse Now). An image of the water buffalo also being slaughtered with a machete, shows a parallel to the lack of morals and control of all people in Vietnam (Kinder 18). Coppola creates an image of hunter and prey with this same symbol of the buffalo and also ends Willard’s journey with the slaying of his “dragon” (Kinder 18). This is Coppola’s largest alteration to the novel as instead of watching Kurtz die, Willard “becomes his bloody executioner” (Stewart 459). In both the novella and the movie, Kurtz’s death is the end of each respective narrator’s quest. Marlow, although deeply affected by Kurtz, does not ever truly lose or sacrifice his humanity by talking and being with Kurtz. On the other hand, Willard must sacrifice any chance of his happiness by being forever on the dark side of the “heart of

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