Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad, and Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, share a similar narrative thread as well as multiple themes. Although both describe different countries and events, they detail the effects of colonialism on a third-world country, degradation of man by his fellow man, and the madness of violence within a “civilized” society. Both works feature a character, or characters, who have little regard for or understanding of cultures different from their own. This paper will focus more on Apocalypse Now and its departure from the source material, Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are explorations of ambiguity, hypocrisy, and moral confusion. Does madness exist in a world already insane? Kurtz is not insane but is put into an insane situation which brings out the darkness that exists within. Marlow makes his way up the Congo River as the river fights against him. He starts at Outer Station, reaches the Central Station, and then reaches Inner Station. The atmosphere gets darker and more absurd the closer he gets to Kurtz. Willard starts his mission in daylight. By the time he has made it to Kurtz, it is perpetually dusk, on the verge of complete darkness. Both Marlow’s and Willard’s journeys on rivers take them deeper into jungles
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Conrad’s narrator comes to an unsettling truth about humanity: that humanity’s manners, ethics, and civilization are a very basic attempt to deny and mask the truth about its innate darkness. Conrad’s Marlow feels sympathetic to Kurtz, but never steps past the line of savagery as Kurtz does. Coppola’s “Marlow”, Willard, tells Kurtz that he “sees no method at all” in Kurtz operations, but his earlier cold-blooded murder of a wounded Vietnamese woman appear similarly Kurtzian. Willard is unconsciously more like Kurtz than he wishes to admit to