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Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now
Joseph Conrad once wrote, “the individual consciousness was destined to be in total contradiction to its physical and moral environment” (Conrad-187); 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. When the characters are unable to withstand the various temptations along this passage, they helplessly sell their souls to corruption. In both the book and the movie, the various events along each individual journey help illustrate not only the physical deterioration of the environment and the characters’ health but also the psychological degradation of the characters’ conscience and consciousness.
In both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, the various dramatic shifts in the environment from the onset of the river journeys delineate an increasing barbarity and savagery as the characters penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. The directions of both journeys are formally established as a movement from “open and boundless to narrow and restricted spaces” (66), from the light of the sun into the darkness. This narrowing of space symbolically represents that these men are trapped within this valley, with no chance of escaping from the many horrors they face.
In addition to these numerous shifts in the ambiance, the events that occur along the respective river journeys also illustrate their advancing into the “heart of an impenetrable darkness” (50). Signs of physical fatigue play a role in both works, displaying this advancement. Although the physical aspects of the river journeys contribute in establishing the foundation for the entrance into the heart of darkness, the psychological journeys traveled by Marlow and Willard are more reflective of the “restorative return to the primitive sources of being” (1). Through spiritual voyages of self-discovery amid continual moral deterioration, the characters have evolved into new beings who reflect the uttermost cruelty of imperialistic domination. Unable to restrain his many desires in this land of temptations with “his own true self … his own inborn strength,” Marlow’s determination to survive has been undermined by his moral conflicts (60). Marlow at length decides to let his conscience float around as a negligible variable. Likewise, the pilgrims on board are also subjects of moral degeneration. As they involve themselves deeper and deeper into the vilest scramble for loot, they become mentally disfigured due to their loss of self-restraint. Similarly Willard and his crew face a certain moral confusion, mistiness, and a philosophical intangibility. Willard begins to realize his willingness to live in this prehistoric society. With a luminous lack of identity, he travels nearer to insanity and primitive barbarism. They crew of both companies prove unable to cope with the drudgery around them and lose themselves into the wilderness.
Apart from the falling sense of conscience, both crews also suffer from a slow deterioration of their consciousness as they proceed up their respective rivers. The characters’ conscious actions, feelings, and outlooks shift to the sub-conscious, perhaps even the unconscious, life within them. As their surroundings transform from the known concrete world into the unknown their consciousness follows, loosening itself amongst this imminent darkness.
Marlow, Willard, and their company, undertake a river journey which symbolizes an unraveling of the threads of civilization, an investigation leading toward beginnings and origins. In the end, they emerge as ‘new-sprung’ individuals from the experience. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s great understanding is that existence itself has no moral heart; which is proved by his being unable to sustain the river experience with his moral perspective intact and unaltered. In the end, he is a changed man, vastly isolated and tremendously different from those abroad the Nellie. In like fashion, Willard in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now remains isolated by his newly acquired knowledge. He has been changed, humbled by his confrontation with the darkness inherent in Kurtz, in himself, in existence. Both river journeys, each by itself literal and symbolic, physical and psychological, reflect searches towards death and dissolution that lead into the “heart of darkness”. Each tropical river embodies the characters’ struggles with their conscience and consciousness, as well as their battles against the “fascination of abomination” (78).
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