Compare And Contrast Apocalypse Now And Heart Of Darkness

Not the End

Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’s are two magnum opuses to quest the evil and virtuous human nature. They have some similar and different places among the story plots, characterizations, and environments. At the same time, they reflect the exploration of the human nature in a different era and the exploration is not the end. At the beginning, the two works have plentiful the same “story” (Dorall 303). Heart of Darkness tells a story about Marlow, a young captain. He reserves a commission to research Kurtz. Kurtz is an ivory trader, who works for a Belgian trading company and loses in the Congo jungles. Apocalypse Now’s background is Vietnam War. An American captain Willard gets a mission

Marlow and Willard seem like two epitomes of every people in the world. They are nobodies and have not strong power. However, they still have some difference. Marlow is a bystander but Willard is soldier. So he is both a bystander and a firsthand participator in the war. For Willard, “When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle” (IMDb 1). Hence, Willard has a double identity to have a profound reflection of inhumane war and frangible human nature. Meanwhile, the film also keeps Kurtz’s name in Heart of Darkness. The novella and the film all introduce Kurtz by other people’s talking or other materials to create mystery. Kurtz has different backgrounds in the two works but they all come from the traditional civilized society. In the novella, Kurtz has European descent “All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (Conrad 4). In the film, Kurtz graduates from West Point and gains countless medals. Two Kurtz are convinced by people that they are civilized people, but the cruel realizations change them. Their behaviors are like wild animals and lose reason and morality. It is the decay of humanitarian in the realization because utterly false and hypocrisy social mores lead the evil human