Heart of Darkness vs. Apocalypse Now

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, was portrayed fairly well in the film Apocalypse Now, despite the many factual differences. By setting the movie in the Vietnam War, an era all too familiar when the movie was released and still relevant today, instead of the Belgian Congo, the movie seems more relevant than Conrad’s book. Pages could be filled with the similarities between the works. The misty atmosphere of jungle with dangerous natives on all sides, the dingy aquatic craft, the gruesome displays at Kurtz’s temple, the attack of harmless arrows, the spear that kills the helmsman, the strangely out of place Western worshiper of Kurtz, etc. One of the interesting traits of Kurtz is his existence as not much more than a voice. While he does not seem as sickly in the movie as he is described in the book, he nevertheless acts calmly. In the book, his voice holds incredible sway. In the movie, the effect of his voice is more implied, but for a while, his face is not shown, so he does seem to be primarily a voice. The most poignant similarity between the two is the statement of “the horror, the horror” as Kurtz’s last words. Both contain the themes of desire for adventure and the collapse of “noble” characters. Conrad’s Kurtz, however, seems to fall into darkness primarily for the purpose of material gains. As such he retains a selfish desire to make it home and be rich and famous. Coppola’s version seems to indicate Kurtz’s withdrawal into a kind of contented hopelessness. He wants his son to know what happened to him and how he overcame the deceitful suffering that he found all around.  Both works’ philosophies involve the rejection of morality in favor of instinctual intellect, but in the movie, Kurtz indicates that there is still a compartmentalized morality left. He values truth to self and others more than his wicked deeds. In the movie, the observer, Captain Willard, manages to avoid falling into the “trap” that Kurtz fell into of becoming the pagan idol of others, but there is no such trap in the book.