I compared the Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2010)

Inside every human soul lies a savage evilness that remains most invisible in the normal world. This dark side of human soul, like a monster imprisoned in a cage, a devil hidden from the daylight, lurks deeply, quietly in man's mind and seems would never show itself out. But somehow, this evil side will break out during times of isolation from our culture. Whenever one culture confronts another, whenever different cultures encounter, there is often a fear of corruption and loss of self that leads us to discover more about our true selves, causing madness by those who have yet to discover. Joseph Conrad's book, Heart of Darkness and the movie, Apocalypse Now are both stories about man's journey into his self, and the discoveries to be made there. They are also about Man confronting his fears of failure, insanity, and death.
In Heart of Darkness, during Marlow's mission to find Kurtz, he is also trying to find himself. He, like Kurtz, had good intentions of entering the Congo. Joseph Conrad tries to show us that Marlow is what Kurtz had been and Kurtz is what Marlow could become. Every human has a little of Marlow and Kurtz in them. Along the trip into the wilderness, they discover their true selves through contact with barbaric natives. As Marlow ventures further up the Congo, he feels like he is traveling back through time. He sees the unsettled wilderness and can feel the darkness of its solitude. The deeper into the jungle he goes, the more awkward the inhabitants seem. Kurtz had lived in the Congo, and was separated from his own culture for quite some time. He had once been considered an honorable man, but the jungle changed him greatly. Here in Congo, set apart from his own society, he discovered his evil side and became corrupted by his power and solitude. Marlow tells us about the Ivory that Kurtz kept as his own, and that he had no restraint. Kurtz went insane and allowed himself to be worshiped as a god. It appears that while Kurtz had been isolated from his culture, he had become assimilated into this violent native culture, and allowed his evil side to control him. Marlow realizes that only very near the time of death does a person grasp the true nature of human. Kurtz's last supreme moment showed him how horrible the human soul really can be. Marlow can only guess that what Kurtz saw that caused him to exclaim "The horror!" Marlow guesses that Kurtz suddenly knew everything and discovered how horrible the way of man can be. Marlow learned from Kurtz's death and he now knows that inside every human there always exists this horrible, evil side.
The movie, Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1979, is basically adapted from Joseph Conrad's book. The similar story goes that Captain Willard is a Marlow who is on a mission into Cambodia during the Vietnam War to find and kill an insane Colonel Kurtz. Kurtz was an outstanding officer and once a respected, successful, brilliant leader. Like Joseph Conrad's Kurtz, this Kurtz shows us a man who was once highly esteemed, but then corrupted by the horror of war and the cultures he met. In Heart of Darkness we find that Kurtz's major fear is being white in a non-white jungle. In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz tells Willard that the Special Forces went into a village, checking the children for polio and going away, and the communists then came into the village and cutting off all the children's arms. This shocking experience could be the main evidence for the cause of Colonel Kurtz's madness. This could be the beginning of Kurtz's falling into the darkness. He found himself facing a new culture and has a terrible time dealing with it. This tells us that the evil side and the madness in both two Kurtz were brought out by the fear of new cultures different from their own, and their inability to cope with this fear. They found their original moralities; faiths, ideals were so fragile, so easily collapsed before new cultures. And at last they both crushed down by this fear and governed by it.
Moreover, in the film, through Willard's journey, we see American culture always views itself as correct, and Americans regard themselves as powerful police of the world. Their culture looked down upon the Vietnamese because Vietnamese were simpler, just as Europe and Marlow looked down on the Africans. Believing themselves to be superior, Americans had many difficulties in handling the fact that they are actually not that superior. Apocalypse Now makes a point to show us that the chief of a boat armed to the teeth was killed by a native who just threw a spear, which also happened in Marlow's journey. This opens Captain Willard's eyes to the horror he now finds himself in. Both the Conrad's novel and Coppola's film reveal that we live sheltered in our own society, and our exposure to other cultures is limited. Often, the more technologically advanced cultures look down upon those which they deem to be simpler. On the occasion that some member of one culture does come into contact with another, simpler culture, a self discovery happens. Ultimately, both cultures realize that deep down inside, all humans are essentially the same. We all possess a heart of goodness and a heart of darkness. This is truly an undeniable fact. The self discovery often causes madness, insanity as the evil side is unleashed. Only those who have completed the journey into self can understand the actions of people such as two Kurtz. "The horror!!" they screamed when the death finally seized them. The scream was miserable, sorrowful, desperate, and was from their heart of darkness. No one could understand them because they are alone in the world of horror.