Heart of darkness and Apocalyp

A detailed Summary of Heart of darkness and Apocalyp

When Joseph Conrad wrote "Heart of Darkness" he could not have envisioned director Francis ford Coppola's version of his work. Coppola transformed a story of a man sent to Africa to find a missing trader to the story of a Vietnam soldier sent to kill a rogue marine. He did so without damaging the spirit of the work as one of the battle within, the battle between good and evil.

"Paths, paths everywhere; a stamped in network of paths spreading over empty land . . . (Conrad 39)." When Coppola decided to make a story telling the journey to the heart of darkness, he had many paths from which to choose how to tell the tale. In some choices he followed Conrad, and in others he forged his own path.

Coppola's film, Apocalypse Now like Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness leaves the viewer in moral confusion; however, Coppola uses radically different interpretations of Conrad's characters to produce the same confusion. Both the novella and the film leave the viewer or reader in a moral dilemma when he weighs the actions of Kurtz in respect to the ideals of the institution from which he comes. Despite this similarity, Coppola's film offers a character who parallels Conrad's Marlow, yet is drastically different in his relationship to t

Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now leaves one in a moral dilemma when you consider the events surrounding Kurtz. The business institution in Heart of Darkness addresses the atrocities of Kurtz as unsound and bad for business. The company never speaks of the terrible actions as unmoral, and one begins to question why the decapitations and ruthless killings are not issues acknowledged by the authorities. According to Hagen, this is a " . . . separation of reason from civilized morality . . . causing Marlow to prefer the nightmare of Kurtz. Better to commit atrocities than to count them wrong on grounds of efficiency (294)." It is more appealing to Marlow to ally himself with a dedicated sinner, and face the heart of darkness, than to judge Kurtz as wrong for business reasons. When Marlow becomes loyal to " . . . the nightmare of his choice, (Conrad 164)," the reader follows him into an amoral center, where his reason is separated from his civilized morality, that which dictates the values of mother culture. The same moral issue confuses the reader, and is uncomfortable judging what the lesser of the two evils is, Kurtz or the business (Hagen 294). Coppola's art leaves the viewer in the same moral dilemma as Conrad's novella does.

Willard and Marlow must both face Kurtz; however, each encounters a different one. Marlow faces Conrad's Kurtz, who is "a vestige of hope"(LaBrasca 290) from the petty institution he comes from. He is an honest character who the reader understands does bad things, and does it because of his dedication to his cause. Marlow states, "There was nothing either above or below him . . . he had kicked himself free of the earth," to pursue his purpose: ivory. No rules stand between him and his goal because he is above them, and is beyond normal humanity (Dorall 305). Conrad's Kurtz only sees his objective, and if he is accomplishing it, there is no need to consider right or wrong. He cannot be evil since h

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Approximate Word count = 1307
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English