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Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness explored the darker side of human nature. When Francis Ford Coppola released the eye-opening film Apocalypse Now, he expanded on and delved deeper into this theme. Despite some differences between Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, the meanings of the symbols in each are mutual and the overall purpose is parallel: to show the horror of the dark side of the human spirit. Both are stories about a mans internal struggle with good and evil. Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now share the same view of the jungle and of its inhabitants: the natives and the Vietnamese/Cambodians, respectively. When Marlow looked out from the steamer into the jungle he noted it as this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace.
It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. The jungle is hostile, it is ready to take its vengeance upon the intruders and send them to their deaths. Coppola depicts the jungle as equally aggressive. Chef and Willard scramble back to the boat after a tiger lunges out of the thick vegetation at them while they are looking for a mango tree. Once on the boat you can hear Chef franticly screaming I gotta remember, never get out of the boat!
Never get out of the boat! Never get out of the boat. In Apocalypse Now, the landing zone where Willard first meets Kilgore is the central station. The jungle is under control in that small area. The final main location is the inner station, where Kurtz resides.
There is quite a difference in the physical makeup of this site between the novel and movie, but the common trait of the two is that the jungle is in total control. Both Marlow and Willard can sense this and are more than uncomfortable while being there. Their uneasiness while being there is shared in both the novel and film, although Willard is actually taken prisoner while Marlow's scenario is different. Willard consistently simulates Marlow throughout the movie.
They both are unshakable when it comes to successfully completing their missions and both men seem to gradually understand Kurtz and all that he represents. Kurtz is probably the most consistent character between the novel and film, not in a physical sense, but in the symbolic breakdown. In Heart of Darkness, he is withered and sick, a shadow of a human being. In Apocalypse Now, he is very large and for the most part, healthy. While these two facts may seem to set the two different Kurtz apart, they are really equivalent in their ideologies and most of all what they represent. Conrad's and Coppola's Kurtz both represents a man who was everything society expected of him, and then threw it all away to make his own standards, his own rules and simply live in his own chaos.
In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz was revered. The manager at the central station mentions that To-day he is chief of the best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two years more and... but I daresay you know what he will be in two years time. The manager admires him and sees that he is destined for great power, but the manager isnt aware that Kurtz has deviated from the normal, that he has become something altogether different.
In Apocalypse Now, Willard narrates as he looks through Kurtz's dossier: I couldnt believe they wanted this man dead. Third-generation West Point, top of his class. Korea, Airborne, about a thousand decorations. Et cetera, et cetera. Id heard his voice on that tape and it really put the hook in me, but I couldnt connect that voice with this man. Kurtz is the ideal soldier.
He is everything that is expected from the best of the best. He is what others strive to be; everything that the Company, which is the U. S. military in Apocalypse Now, wants him to be. Yet, just like in Heart of Darkness, Kurtz steps off the cliff and throws away everything. The reason the Army wants him dead is because he defies everything that they represent; he makes a mockery of their ideals.
On a radio recording you hear Kurtz say: We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army. And they call me an assassin.
What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie, and we have to be merciful for those who lie. Those Nabobs. I hate them. I really do hate them.
By using words such as 'incinerate', Kurtz creates a feeling of horror and horrible acts, but he merely is stating the truth of what is ordinary practice during wars, yet the Army does not want to hear about the absurd nature of war, putting it that way is an affront to what they stand for. Willard and Marlow both realize that Kurtz is what they could become, yet they both resist the temptation to take that downward plunge into the unreal. In both movie and book, deep down Kurtz hates what he has become; he hates the horror that has enveloped him. In Apocalypse Now this is shown by the scrawled message in the file Willard looks through.
It reads Drop the Bomb, exterminate them all, while in Heart of Darkness Marlow finds the same thing that reads Exterminate all the brutes! . Somewhere deep down Kurtz wants the horror to end. The last character who is represented almost the same in both works is the Russian. Although he is a trader in Heart of Darkness and an American photojournalist in Apocalypse Now, he is practically the exact same character. He is the prime example of Kurtz's devout disciple. He says This man has enlarged my mind.
Many of his other lines in Apocalypse Now are directly taken from Conrad. His attitudes and his regard for Kurtz are common between the two. He talks in sporadic, choppy sentences, trying to quote the magnificent things Kurtz has taught him. He is a parallel in almost every way.
In conclusion, there are a few differences between Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, yet the meaning of the symbols in each, and the overall message stays consistent between them. They both equally convey the horror and the shadowy side of human nature, if taken to its breaking point and beyond. Both Conrad and Coppola do a superior job showing the audience the horror, the horror!
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Research essay sample on Joseph Heart Of Darkness Explored The Darker Side
