OPPapers.com

Comparison Of Heart Of Darkness And Apocalypse Now

Important Note: If you'd like to save a copy of the paper on your computer, you can COPY and PASTE it into your word processor. Please, follow these steps to do that in Windows:
1. Select the text of the paper with the mouse and press Ctrl+C.
2. Open your word processor and press Ctrl+V.


Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now



Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, and Apocalypse Now, a

movie by Francis Ford Coppola can be compared and contrasted in many ways.

By focusing on their endings and on the character of Kurtz, contrasting the

meanings of the horror in each media emerges. In the novel the horror

reflects Kurtz tragedy of transforming into a ruthless animal whereas in

the film the horror has more of a definite meaning, reflecting the war and

all the barbaric fighting that is going on.



Conrad's Heart of Darkness, deals with the account of Marlow, a

narrator of a journey up the Congo River into the heart of Africa, into the

jungle, his ultimate destination. Marlow is commissioned as an ivory agent

and is sent to ivory stations along the river. Marlow is told that when he

arrives at the inner station he is to bring back information about Kurtz,

the basis of this comparison and contrast in this paper, who is the great

ivory agent, and who is said to be sick. As Marlow proceeds away to the

inner station "to the heart of the mighty big river.... resembling an

immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving

afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land"

(Dorall 303), he hears rumors of Kurtz's unusual behavior of killing the

Africans. The behavior fascinates him, especially when he sees it first

hand: "and there it was black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids- a head

that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry

lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth,...