Heart of Darkness Analysis

A detailed Summary of Heart of Darkness Analysis

The movie Apocalypse Now is an extremely fitting example of someone adapting and changing an old masterpiece such as Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" to create a new one in its own right and also using a different medium. Although the movie version Apocalypse Now is based on the "Heart of Darkness", it is not a filmed version of the story. The setting has been changed to make it more appropriate to the present. The film has used Vietnam as the setting, when America tried to 'tame' the Vietnamese communists, whereas in "Heart of Darkness" Conrad used the Congo and the colonialists and traders who went there to tame the locals and exploited them. In the process, both sets of intruders entered into the dark recesses of their own minds. Both the movie and the novel have the same underlying themes; however, the plots, characters, setting, time, purposes and points of view differ enough to create two extremely different effects. Conrad's ideals are not lost from his book to the movie Apocalypse Now. Both portray the ideals of good vs. evil and purity vs. darkness.

In "Heart of Darkness" and Apocalypse Now, both the characters Marlow and Willard were driven to their breaking points by the harsh realities of their environm

"a delicious sensation of having come upon

the faintest trace of a response to the terrible

ents. Both characters were very much out of place in a strange, foreign environment and were pushed to the edge. In "Heart of Darkness", the journey to find Kurtz, who is an ivory trader who has gone deep into the jungles of Africa in search of ivory; while in Apocalypse Now, Kurtz is a high-ranking officer in the military who has disobeyed orders and is now fighting the Vietnam war in Cambodia with his unit. Vietnam was probably chosen as the setting for Apocalypse Now because it represents modern-day darkness. In both cases, the men travel upriver towards Kurtz on a boat. In Apocalypse Now, a character by the name of Willard parallels the character Marlow in "Heart of Darkness". His mission is to travel to Cambodia and assassinate Kurtz. Marlow is the main character in this novel. It may seem that the novel is more about Kurtz and his degeneration than about imperialism in its idealized version compared to the way it was really handled in the middle of nowhere. However, these ingredients of the story are shown through their effects on Marlow. He had taken the 'journey into eternity' and we are shown the results of this journey on him from the very beginning of the book:

The earth seemed unearthly (...) It was unearthly, and

you would admit to yourself that there was in you just

Marlow can easily represent any man who has a nightmare in which his other, more savage self confronts him. By bringing in Marlow, Conrad has generalized his story. Even before leaving Brussels, he acted as though he was setting out for the center of the earth, not the continent. There is already this warning given to us that the journey will be eventful and extraordinary. During the journey, Marlow was tempted by the wilderness, and felt a trace of response to it:

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1391
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English