Apocalypse Now As An Interpretation Of Heart Of Darkness

Apocalypse Now as an Interpretation of Heart of Darkness The novella written by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, is an intense story of the travel through the human psyche and one's own personal journey. The immensely deep perceptions found in this novella have been comprised into a movie called Apocalypse Now written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. In reviewing both of these masterpieces we can see many underlying similarities between situations, characters, and themes despite the differences in the characters ultimate missions, settings and time periods.

In basing his story of Joseph Conrad's ideas Coppola sets the scene of his movie during the time of the Vietnam War. We see the illustration of the war and ultimately, the confusion of what the war was really fought over. "The B*llsh*t piled up so fast in Vietnam you needeed wings to stay above it." (Captain Willard) But this film is about the human mind and the depths that it can reach not exactly the war that was taking place.

James Hardie Jr. and wife, Rev. Willard (LOC)

1. Sen. Ben Tillman, 2. John E. Osborne, 3. J.B. S...

English: Francis Ford Coppola at the Cannes film f...

Vietnam is merely a backdrop to punctuate the psychological message that Coppola is trying to send out, which was the inspired theme taken from Heart of Darkness. In which Joseph Conrad clearly makes an impact visualizing to his readers how the mind is capable of many things, and is able to be manipulated an twisted when pushed, for example, searching for ways of survival.

In Joseph Conrad's story the theme takes place in the African Congo while his characters are traveling up the Thames River in pursuit of Kurtz. In the business of ivory sales and trade, a worker and hunter named Kurtz has broken away to settle in a native uncivilized area of the Congo, excessively hunting for ivory and thus becoming consumed by the land and...