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The theme of imperialism in Heart of Darkness
The theme of imperialism in Heart of Darkness
The darkness of imperialism in the heart of darkness
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Recommended: The theme of imperialism in Heart of Darkness
The novella Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad and the film Apocalypse Now, inspired by Conrad's novella, directed by Francis Coppola both involve the departure from civilization into a world of unknown. The protagonists of the stories, Marlow and Willard respectively, embark on a mission to search for Kurtz, a man who is portrayed as an evil genius in both texts. The majority of the plot unravels on the river, as the protagonist travel with a crew on a long, slow boat ride through dangerous dark jungles. This journey, presented similarly in both works, represents a path from civilization and the ideal to a place of madness and insanity. The theme of madness is prevalent in both the novella and the film, particularly evident in the scene of the natives' attack, and is used to emphasize the negative effects of imperialism.
Firstly, imperialism is explored in Heart of Darkness by the European colonization in Africa along the Congo River. Similarly, Apocalypse Now explores imperialism by the U.S intervention in Vietnam during the Cold War. With these events as the historical backdrops in both texts, Marlow and Willard travel up a river and journey from comfort and safety, toward the insane Kurtz, who is a symbolic result of imperialism: a completely mad man. In their respective journeys, the protagonists and crew members slowly fall into madness themselves as they travel closer to Kurtz. A scene that is shared in both works is when the protagonists' boats are under attack by the natives. In this scene, Conrad and Coppola both illustrates the theme of madness using the driver of the boat--the helmsman in Heart of Darkness and Chief in Apocalypse Nows.
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad brings the readers' attention to the helmsm...
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... madness and the theme. As Chief concludes that Willard’s imperialistic orders and attitudes are hopeless, the screen is split, Chief’s side is dark and gloomy while Willard’s is light and green. This contrast mirrors Chief's mad state contrasting with Willard’s sanity. Coppola uses the technique again to contrast Chief’s madness with the clear sky and sun which shines past Chief at the viewer. The skies are calm but Chief obviously is not, emphasising Chief’s insanity further.
Madness is an important theme in both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. Conrad and Coppola both effectively present it with prominence using the boat driver character to portray the theme and also use subtle contrasting techniques to pair the madness with imperialism. Conrad and Coppola use similar ideas and effectively execute the presentation of the theme with the medium of their text.
In 1979, Francis Coppola released a film that he said he hoped "would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness, and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war" (as quoted in Hagen 230). His film, Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel Heart of Darkness, is the story of Captain Benjamin Willard's (Martin Sheen) journey to the interior of the jungle of Southeastern Asia for the purpose of executing his orders to track down Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Once Kurtz is located, Willard is to "terminate his command with extreme prejudice" because Kurtz has raised an army of deserters and natives, whom he rules over like a fanatical war lord- When Willard finally reaches Kurtz's compound and meets him, he discovers a man who has descended into primitive barbarism. From the beginning of their encounter, Kurtz knows why Willard was sent to find him and makes no effort to stop Willard from slaying him with a machete. With his mission accomplished, Willard boards the boat that will take him. back to civilization.
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.
One of the many similarities between Heart of Darkness and "Apocalypse Now" is race. Joseph Conrad and Francis Coppola both use white men as the characters that have dominance (Bradley). The white men not only dominate their respective crews, but also the peoples native to the country the white men are visiting. The character Conrad uses, Marlow, and Coppola uses his character, Willard, both look at the natives as though white men are the civilized culture and the native people are the savage culture (Franklin). Both works also reflect the theory that "civilized" white men that go into an uncivilized land become savage and do not return to white civilization. An example of this that is in the book is MarlowÕs appointment with the doctor. The doctor measures Marlow's skull to compare its size at the present time to the size of his skull upon his return from the Congo. The thought is that a civilized manÕs skull is a different size than a savage's skull. When Marlow asks the doctor how what the results of this test have been in the past, the doctor comments that there are none because no civilized person has ever returned from the Congo. An example of this in the movie is when Willard faces his own personality of whether or not to complete his soldierly mission of killing Kurtz or to abort it. If he completes the mission he is still civil, if he does not, the Vietnam jungle has conquered him. The first soldier that is sent to kill Kurtz did not kill Kurtz, but in fact became one of his followers.
While there are differences between Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Apocalypse Now!, and Joseph Conrad novel, The Heart of Darkness, Kurtz and his influence on the main character remain very similar. Both the movie and novel depict a protagonist’s struggle to travel upstream in a ship in search of a man named Kurtz. While doing so, Marlow (The Heart of Darkness)/Willard (Apocalypse Now!) become progressively fascinated with Kurtz. Kurtz is claimed to have a profound influence on his followers and is becoming a huge influence on Marlow/Willard as well.
On September 3, 1945, the world awoke to a feeling of serenity it had only experienced a few times in the past 30 years. The second of two arduous world wars was over, the geographical lines of the globe had been redrawn, and new policies were emerging daily to prevent these events from repeating themselves. With the jarring events that took place in this relatively short time span, a global shift was inevitable and swift moving. A total overhaul of the ideology of humans was in the works in 1945, and human rights (including women, African Americans, Jews, and other minorities) catapulted to the forefront of global politics. But before this could happen, the maps had to be “redrawn.” Individuals who lived through this time period saw the world as they know it change, from
Although one is a book and the other is a movie, both Apocalypse Now, which is directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, portray very detailed scenes by using various elements in their respective works. A scene that stands out is the death of the helmsman, which contains many similarities but also many differences between the two works. Similarities like the iconic fog that appears serve to convey a message of the helplessness that the characters feel because of the mystery of their surroundings and of the uncertainty of their tasks. In the book Heart of Darkness, the death of the helmsman takes place during the journey that Marlow’s crew is making to the inner station of the Congo River in order to retrieve Kurtz, who is gravely ill. During their trip to the inner station, the crew experiences a thick fog which impedes them from advancing any further toward their destination.
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's journey, both mental and physical, into the depths of the wild African jungle and the human soul. The seaman, Marlow, tells his crew a startling tale of a man named Kurtz and his expedition that culminates in his encounter with the "voice" of Kurtz and ultimately, Kurtz's demise. The passage from Part I of the novel consists of Marlow's initial encounter with the natives of this place of immense darkness, directly relating to Conrad's use of imagery and metaphor to illustrate to the reader the contrast between light and dark. The passage, although occurring earlier on in the novel, is interspersed with Marlow's two opposing points of view: one of naïveté, which comes before Marlow's eventual epiphany after having met Kurtz, and the matured perspective he takes on after all of the events leading up to his and Kurtz's encounter.
In the opening scenes of the documentary film "Hearts of Darkness-A Filmmaker's Apocalypse," Eleanor Coppola describes her husband Francis's film, "Apocalypse Now," as being "loosely based" on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Indeed, "loosely" is the word; the period, setting, and circumstances of the film are totally different from those of the novella. The question, therefore, is whether any of Conrad's classic story of savagery and madness is extant in its cinematic reworking. It is this question that I shall attempt to address in this brief monograph by looking more closely at various aspects of character, plot, and theme in each respective work.
Imperialism, Symbolism, and Materialism in Heart of Darkness. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness Marlow, the main character, symbolizes the positiveness of Imperialism. Marlow, as a character, realizes the evil that negative Imperialism has caused and decides it is truly unnecessary. When Marlow states, "I have got a heavenly mission to civilize you," he expresses his good intentions to help the Africans progress and advance.
In Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" the reader learns more and more about human nature as Marlow, Captain Willard, go farther and farther up the river in search of Kurtz. An evil side lies within every man, but this evil remains repressed by society. When moving up the river and farther away from civilization, the evil side begins to break out. Whenever basically different cultures meet we are led to discover ourselves and can even drive us to perceived madness.
Both Conrad’s, “Heart of Darkness”, and Coppola’s, “Apocalypse Now”, profoundly illustrate the journey of man into their inner self and man’s encounters with their insanity, fears and demise. The novella and film are comprised of numerous pivotal themes that facilitate the understanding of the deeper meaning of both works. Fundamentally, theme is an extensive message or idea expressed by an author and is a crucial element of literature since it sheds light on universal concepts. The most striking parallels that can be formulated when comparing themes in both the novella and the film are associated with human nature. Specifically, Conrad and Coppola incorporate theme of hypocrisy in order to portray man’s incredible potential for evil.
Heart of Darkness shows imperialism in more of a physical and psychological perspective. The main character Marlow, in his beliefs, shows a positive side to imperialism. Marlow does openly admit that he does not belong as an invader to this land that is not his; however, he also says that he will try to help these people, the antithesis of most, if not all, of his comrades. Concerning these imperialistic invasions, he says,
"Heart of Darkness , which follows closely the actual events of Conrad's Congo journey, tells of the narrator's fascination by a mysterious white man, Kurtz, who, by his eloquence and hypnotic personality, dominates the brutal tribesmen around him. Full of contempt for the greedy traders who exploit the natives, the narrator cannot deny the power of this figure of evil who calls forth from him something approaching reluctant loyalty."[1]
In his novella Heart of Darkness (1899), Joseph Conrad through his principal narrator, Marlow, reflects upon the evils of the human condition as he has experienced it in Africa and Europe. Seen from the perspective of Conrad's nameless, objective persona, the evils that Marlow encountered on the expedition to the "heart of darkness," Kurtz's Inner Station on the banks of the snake-like Congo River, fall into two categories: the petty misdemeanors and trivial lies that are common- place, and the greater evils -- the grotesque acts society attributes to madmen. That the first class of malefaction is connected to the second is illustrated in the downfall of the story's secondary protagonist, the tragically deluded and hubristic Mr. Kurtz. The European idealist, believing the lies of his Company and of the economic imperialism that supports it, is unprepared for the test of character that the Congo imposes, and succumbs to the potential for the diabolical latent within every human consciousness.
Throughout Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, a sense of imperialism is present. Imperialism is defined as “acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies”. Through the novel, many of the travels Marlow encounters contain imperialist ideas. The whole continent is used as a symbol for this theme. So therefore you can tell that imperialism is just as bad as the disease that many people get from the Congo, they become infected.