Similarities and Variations in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocolypse Now

Brutality and piqued fear are synonymous with the world of both Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s visual depiction of the novel, Apocalypse Now. Each capture audiences in different ways: Conrad by his adept use of flowering language and Coppola by bringing Conrad’s world to life on the big screen. Coppola sets the story that originally takes place in the Congo in Vietnam during the strenuous war with the United States. Despite these aesthetic variances, Coppola pulls inspiration from Conrad’s existing text in more scenes than not. Specifically, the ruthlessness of the attack from the “brutes” as Marlow and Willard’s steamboat further approaches Kurtz. As the crews descend into the perpetual “heart of darkness,” animosity thickens and death is the ultimate fate for the two contrasting scenes.

Both boats, in the film and novel, are on a mission downriver—whether to arouse childhood intrigue of the snake-like river or to assassinate this specter of a man, Kurtz. These missions come to a halt as a thick fog rolls out over the river. Marlow does not expect any sort of attack because “the jungle of both banks [were] quite impenetrable--and yet eyes were in it” (Conrad 114). The fog lifts and arrows are shot at the steamboat despite Marlow’s previous claims, sending shockwaves of inevitable fear over his crew. Howls erupt from the edge of the trees like battle cries and the crew is quick on the defense. All efforts of security are cut short as a spear kills the Helmsman. Coppola approaches this scene similarly except the Vietnamese launch toy arrows to scare off Willard’s boat with no intentions of harming them. As soon as the soldiers take arms and shoot sporadically at the forest, a spear is hurled directly i...

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...ng. The reader gets to hear Marlow’s entire story from his perspective just as it pops into his metaphorical mind. Coppola demonstrates this same internal picture by his use of music as a tool to mimic the mental chaos. As the music builds, so does the tension of each character.

These scenes relate to the theme of the tolerance of the human mind. How much savagery can one man bear without breaking at the middle? A man is killed in both circumstances and yet Marlow and Willard decide to carry out their missions. Though the scenes may be different, the protagonists share a certain curiosity and solidity that makes the journey into the heart of darkness an exciting story to witness.

Works Cited

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.

Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis F. Coppola. Perf. Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando. Paramount Pictures, 1979. DVD.