Comparing Heart Of Darkness And Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness

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In Heart of Darkness, Charles Marlow undergoes an adventurous journey for the sake of retrieving the ill Mr. Kurtz. Similarly, in Apocalypse Now we follow the story of Captain Benjamin L. Willard as he travels through Vietnam on a mission to kill the treacherous Colonel Kurtz. In both stories, we see both Marlow and Willard come face to face with the horrors of colonialism and imperialism. The first theses in Monster Theory is that monsters are symbols and representations of a culture brought out as a reflection of their times. In Heart of Darkness, the Belgium company is perceived to be the monster of imperialism, and in Apocalypse Now, it’s the U.S Military in Vietnam viewed as the monster. In both stories, the monster is shown committing deliberate, non-justifiable cruelties against the natives. Mr. Kurtz as well as Colonel Kurtz also appear to be the monster in both cases because the two of them represent darkness and epitomize the dehumanizing effect colonialism has on the colonizers. …show more content…

The setting starts off in Brussels, Belgium which was referred to as the “white sepulchral” city (Conrad 7). Even though described as a pure place, there was still a sense of evil. As Marlow travels up the river on a steamboat, he goes deeper and deeper into the wilderness which represents darkness and a place of suffering as seen through the imagery of Marlow 's description, “...death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here” (Conrad 4). Like the jungle in Heart of Darkness, the Vietnamese and Cambodian jungles in Apocalypse Now represents evil and the unknown. Willard expresses, “When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think about was getting back into the jungle” (Coppola). The jungle has an everlasting effect on all who

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