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- English
- ManÆs Journey into Self in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now
- Hu240
-
- Inherent inside every human soul is a savage evil side that remains
- repressed by society. Often this evil side breaks out during times of
- isolation from our culture, and whenever one culture confronts another.
- History is loaded with examples of atrocities that have occurred when one
- culture comes into contact with another. Whenever fundamentally different
- cultures meet, there is often a fear of contamination and loss of self that
- leads us to discover more about our true selves, often causing perceived
- madness by those who have yet to discover.
-
- The Puritans left Europe in hopes of finding a new world to welcome them and
- their beliefs. What they found was a vast new world, loaded with Indian
- cultures new to them. This overwhelming cultural interaction caused some
- Puritans to go mad and try to purge themselves of a perceived evil. This
- came to be known as the Salem witch trials.
-
- During World War II, Germany made an attempt to overrun Europe. What
- happened when the Nazis came into power and persecuted the Jews in Germany,
- Austria and Poland is well known as the Holocaust. Here, humanÆs evil side
- provides one of the scariest occurrences of this century. Adolf Hitler and
- his Nazi counterparts conducted raids of the ghettos to locate and often
- exterminate any Jews they found. Although Jews are the most widely known
- victims of the Holocaust, they were not the only targets. When the war
- ended, 6 million Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses,
- Communists, and others targeted by the Nazis, had died in the Holocaust.
- Most of these deaths occurred in gas chambers and mass shootings. This
- gruesome attack was motivated mainly by the fear of cultural intermixing
- which would impurify the "Master Race."
-
- Joseph ConradÆs book, The Heart of Darkness and Francis CoppolaÆs movie,
- Apocalypse Now are both stories about ManÆs journey into his self, and the
- discoveries to be made there. They are also about Man confronting his fears
- of failure, insanity, death, and cultural contamination.
-
- During MarlowÆs mission to find Kurtz, he is also trying to find himself.
- He, like Kurtz had good intentions upon entering the Congo. Conrad tries to
- show us that Marlow is what Kurtz had been, and Kurtz is what Marlow could
- become. Every human has a little of Marlow and Kurtz in them. Marlow says
- about himself, "I was getting savage (Conrad)," meaning that he was becoming
- more like Kurtz. Along the trip into the wilderness, they discover their
- true selves through contact with savage natives.
-
- As Marlow ventures further up the Congo, he feels like he is traveling back
- through time. He sees the unsettled wilderness and can feel the darkness of
- itÆs solitude. Marlow comes across simpler cannibalistic cultures along the
- banks. The deeper into the jungle he goes, the more regressive the
- inhabitants seem.
-
- Kurtz had lived in the Congo, and was separated from his own culture for
- quite some time. He had once been considered an honorable man, but the
- jungle changed him greatly. Here, secluded from the rest of his own society,
- he discovered his evil side and became corrupted by his power and solitude.
- Marlow tells us about the Ivory that Kurtz kept as his own, and that he had
- no restraint, and was " a tree swayed by the wind (Conrad, 209)." Marlow
- mentions the human heads displayed on posts that "showed that Mr. Kurtz
- lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts (Conrad, 220)."
- Conrad also tells us "hisà nerves went wrong, and caused him to preside at
- certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rights, whichà were offered
- up to him (Conrad, 208)," meaning that Kurtz went insane and allowed himself
- to be worshipped as a god. It appears that while Kurtz had been isolated
- from his culture, he had become corrupted by this violent native culture,
- and allowed his evil side to control him.
-
- Marlow realizes that only very near the time of death, does a person grasp
- the big picture. He describes KurtzÆs last moments "as though a veil had
- been rent (Conrad, 239)." KurtzÆs last "supreme moment of complete knowledge
- (Conrad, 239)," showed him how horrible the human soul really can be. Marlow
- can only speculate as to what Kurtz saw that caused him to exclaim "The
- horror! The horror," but later adds that "Since I peeped over the edge
- myself, I understand better the meaning of his stareà it was wide enough to
- embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that
- beat in the darknessà he had summed up, he had judged (Conrad, 241)." Marlow
- guesses that Kurtz suddenly knew everything and discovered how horrible the
- duplicity of man can be. Marlow learned through KurtzÆs death, and he now
- knows that inside every human is this horrible, evil side.
-
- Francis CoppolaÆs movie, Apocalypse Now, is based loosely upon ConradÆs
- book. Captain Willard is a Marlow who is on a mission into Cambodia during
- the Vietnam war to find and kill an insane Colonel Kurtz. Coppola's Kurtz,
- as he experienced his epiphany of horror, was an officer and a sane,
- successful, brilliant leader. Like ConradÆs Kurtz, Coppola shows us a man
- who was once very well respected, but was corrupted by the horror of war and
- the cultures he met.
-
- Coppola tells us in Hearts of Darkness that KurtzÆs major fear is "being
- white in a non white jungle (Bahr)." The story Kurtz tells Willard about the
- Special Forces going into a village, inoculating the children for polio and
- going away, and the communists coming into the village and cutting off all
- the children's inoculated arms, is the main evidence for this implication in
- that film. This is when Kurtz begins to go mad, he "wept like some
- grandmother" when, called back by a villager, he saw the pile of little
- arms, a sophisticated version of the "escalating horrors." What Kurtz meant
- by "escalating horrors" is the Vietnamese armyÆs senseless decapitation,
- torture, and the like. Kurtz is facing a new culture and has a terrible time
- dealing with it. This was the beginning of his insanity.
-
- "All America contributed to the making of Colonel Kurtz, just as all Europe
- produced Mr. Kurtz. Both Kurtzes are idealized in their function as
- eyewitnesses to the atrocities. What is reflected is the threat of loss of
- self, loss of centrality, and the displacement of Western culture from the
- perceived center of history by those whom it has enslaved and oppressed
- (Worthy 24)." This tells us that the evil side and the madness in both
- Kurtzes was brought out by the fear of new cultures different from their
- own, and their inability to deal with this fear. The disconnection between
- the opening words of Kurtz's report "By the simple exercise of our will, we
- can exert a power for good practically unbounded" and the note on the last
- page, "Exterminate all the brutes!" illustrates the progressive
- externalization of Kurtz's fear of "contamination," the personal fear of
- loss of self which colonialist whites saw in the "uncivilized," seemingly
- regressive lifestyle of the natives. Gradually, the duplicity of man and
- reality merged for the two Kurtzes, one in the Congo, and one in Vietnam.
- As this happened, the well defined cultural values masculine/feminine and
- self/other that had specific segregated roles, could not be sustained in the
- Congo or in Vietnam. "For the Americans in Vietnam, as for the colonialists
- in Africa, madness is the result of the disintegration of abstract
- boundaries held to be absolute (Worthy 24)."
-
-
- "As it attempts to confront the 'insanity' of the war through Kurtz' s
- madness, that of the filmmakers, and the madness of U.S. culture, Hearts of
- Darkness exposes the contradictions between the inherent hierarchy and
- inequality within the cultural forces of the United States and official
- democratic principles, which led to the perception that it could waste what
- it viewed as insignificant little people and preserve its own image in the
- world. Along with that is the growing realization, since the Tet Offensive
- of 1968, that the U.S. was somehow way off the mark (Worthy 24)." American
- Culture views it self as "correct", and we see ourselves as powerful police
- of the world. Our culture looked down upon the Vietnamese because they were
- more simple than us, just as Europe and Marlow looked down on the Africans.
- Believing ourselves to be superior, we had a lot of trouble dealing with the
- discovery that we are not.
-
- Coppola makes a point to show us that the Chief of a boat armed to the teeth
- was killed by a native in a tree who threw a spear. Not even an "advanced"
- Navy boat can defend itself against some "simple" natives armed only with
- spears. This opens Captain WillardÆs eyes to the horror of the situation he
- now finds himself in.
-
- Even more intriguing, however, is the similarity between the transformation
- of the characters in Apocalypse Now, and the cast and crew that created it.
- In Hearts of Darkness, (a documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now.)
- Eugene Coppola becomes the narrator ( a Marlow or Captain Willard) and
- Francis becomes Kurtz.
-
- "Francis believed that only if he could duplicate WillardÆs experience,
- could he understand his moral struggle. In other words, he had to lose
- control of his own life before he could find the answers to the questions
- that his narrative asked (Worthy 24)." CoppolaÆs main horror was his fear of
- producing a pretentious movie. "Eleanor repeatedly calls the making of
- Apocalypse Now a journey into Coppola's inner self. Coppola, like Kurtz, is
- regarded as a deity. Moreover, while Willard stalks Kurtz in Apocalypse Now,
- Coppola stalks himself, raising questions which he feels compelled to answer
- but cannot, finally announcing his desire to "shoot himself. " He means
- suicide, but the cinematic connotation of the term, "to shoot," jointly
- criticizes both the U.S. and Coppola's film for exercising a demented
- self-absorption (Worthy 24)." Coppola had to deal with perhaps the most
- agonizing of his troubles: his shriveling self-confidence. As the budget
- soared, as the producers worried, as the crew and actors grew restless and
- dispassionate, Coppola worried that he did not have what it takes to finish
- the film. He struggled with the ending, with his own creative ability, and
- with his sense of purpose.
-
- Martin Sheen, who plays Captain Willard, is the one who really faces the
- horror. During the filming he has a nervous breakdown and later a heart
- attack. Some of his
- co-actors believed that Martin was becoming Captain Willard, and was
- experiencing the same journey of self discovery.
-
- We live our lives sheltered in our own society, and our exposure to
- cultures outside of our own is limited at best. Often, the more
- technologically advanced cultures look down upon those that they deem to be
- simpler. On the occasion that some member of one culture does come into
- contact with another, simpler culture, a self discovery happens. Both
- cultures realize that deep down inside, all humans are essentially the same.
- We all posses a good and an evil side, and no culture, not matter how
- "advanced," is exempt from that fact.. This discovery often causes madness
- as this evil side is allowed out. Only those who have completed the "journey
- into self" can understand the actions of people such as Kurtz. They are
- alone in this world of horrorà
- The Horror!
-
- Works Cited
-
- 1. Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Coppola. With Martin Sheen, Robert Duval,
- and Marlon Brando. Zeotrope, 1979.
-
- 2. Conrad, James. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Great Britain, BPC
- paperbacks ltd. 1990.
-
- 3. Hearts of Darkness. Dir. Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper. Paramount, 1991.
-
- 4. "HEARTS OF DARKNESS -- A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE.", Magill's Survey of
- Cinema, 6-15-1995.
-
- 5. Worthy, Kim, "Hearts of Darkness: Making art, making history, making
- money, making `Vietnam'.".,Vol. 19, Cineaste, 12-01-1992, pp 24.
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