Apocalypse Now Vs Heart Of Darkness

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“Apocalypse Now,” is a movie directed by Francis Coppola, that was based on the novella Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad. I observed many similarities and differences in the two stories and also many parallels that bind them together. While the book, Heart of Darkness, and the film “Apocalypse Now,” are two very different and powerful tragedies, they both provide a valuable examination of the use of military power and a disturbing treatment of the darkness that may lie in all human beings. Both of these sagas contain issues of conflict and survival that are relevant in today’s world. In the book, Marlow, the novel’s protagonist, is a Belgian who is on a journey up the Congo River into the heart of the African jungle. He is employed by the Company as an ivory agent who has been given an order to find one of the company’s workers named Kurtz, who is said to be mad. (Conrad, Heart of Darkness, gutrnberg.org) “Apocalypse Now” is comparatively structured to the book. In it, Coppola examines the ways in which the "darkness" of Vietnam causes an apocalypse of those sent there to …show more content…

(studentbounty.com) In the Heart of Darkness madness and insanity come as a result of imperialism, the quest for territory and power. The same theme of madness and insanity can be seen in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. By doing so, they both use similar ideas and effectively achieve the arrangement of the theme. The isolation and the intense environment of the African jungle affects the invaders by degrading their mental and physical conditions. In both stories, the characters travel up rivers and journey far away from the comfort of their civilized world. Marlow and Captain Willard both slowly fall into the abyss of similar madness that has already consumed Kurtz.The closer they get to Kurtz the more pronounced their mental stability is

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