Heart Of Darkness And Coppola's Apocalypse Now

Joseph Conrad once wrote, “the individual consciousness was destined to be in total contradiction to its physical and moral environment” (Watt 78); the validity of his statement is reflected in the physiological and psychological changes that the characters in both his Heart of Darkness and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now undergo as they travel up their respective rivers, the Congo and the Nung. Each journey up the tropical river is symbolic of a voyage of discovery into the dark heart of man, and an encounter with his capacity for evil. In such a voyage the characters regress to their basic instincts as they assimilate themselves into an alien world with its primeval dangers. In Heart of Darkness, going up the river is described
As Marlow flips through his newly discovered book, he feels that it makes him “forget the jungle … in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real” (Conrad 63); Dorall describes this feeling to be “one that strengthens his determination to confront moral responsibility” (308). However, Marlow later receives “a flash of insight” (Conrad 69), which Frederick Karl suggests to symbolize “the uselessness of burdening himself with conscience” (36). By believing that he is not solely responsible for his savage thoughts, Marlow argues that the “evil extends far beyond his own personal actions” (Adelman 72). This temporary suspension of moral judgement continues when the blood of dead helmsman drips into his shoes during the attack. Marlow, conscious of his “hesitant guilty approach to the account of his meeting with Kurtz” (Cox 32), is “morbidly anxious” (Conrad 78) to fling quickly his socks and shoes overboard. His struggle to rid himself of this guilt beneath his shame amidst a sudden realization of the horrors that surround him portrays: “the acutest analysis of the deterioration of a white man’s morale when let
Lance demonstrates his acceptance of the ‘surrounding evils’ by first camouflaging his face and then volunteering to go with Willard on his mission at the Do Lung Bridge, specified by the Lieutenant Carlson as “arsehole of the world”. Chef, shattered by his encounter with the tiger and the merciless killing of the innocent girl which he ignites by yelling “let’s kill ‘em all”, also develops by gaining courage to confront the ‘hollow core of darkness at Kurtz’s camp in Cambodia with Willard and Lance. Clean is amiable and carefree, and his death while listening to his mother “pleading with him to come back home in one piece” (Dorall 304) is a most embittered moment in the film. Nevertheless, his death is a direct result of his leaving his position, allowing for the enclosing corruptness to “spread its claws and consume him” (Watt 90). The other black is Chief, who becomes more hostile towards Willard as the journey proceeds; this increased dissonance concerning the hierarchy of power in the boat finally leads to direct verbal conflict; near his death, he even tries to pull Willard towards the tip of the spear which robbed his life away from