Breaking on through to the Other Side and Passing Judgment in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now Redux: A River Journey to Hell and Back
The river journeys in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Copolla’s Apocalypse Now Redux are journeys into Hell—journeys that provide revelations on the horror of the modern world. Marlowe and Willard represent two different takeaways from these journeys, however. Marlowe’s journey is up the Congo; Willard’s is up a fictional river into Cambodia. Both are looking for Kurtz, and for both Conrad and Coppola the jungle rivers serve as opportunities to reflect on the madness at the heart of modernity as it dares to dance with untamed wilderness without moral protection. Even Dante had the help of Virgil as the poet descended into Hell. In the river journeys in these two works, there is no moral guide, no moral protection, no moral mooring. Marlowe himself becomes the reluctant voice of morality when he lauds Kurtz for identifying the “horror”—a thing the reader suspects Marlowe would like very much to do himself but cannot because he has adopted a distant and somewhat aloof disposition towards the “droll” comedy that he calls life (Conrad, 2009, p. 65). For Willard, his participation in the horror—but mainly his hacking to death of Kurtz—is what suddenly prompts his awakening. He spends the entire film asleep, as though like a Manchurian candidate obeying the signals given him from on high. By the end of the film, he throws down his murder weapon and departs the jungle with the musings of Kurtz under his arm, indicating that he will study the moral teachings of the man who identified the “horror.” Willard goes from somnolent stooge of the state to wakeful student of the deceased. Marlowe goes from aloof, nonchalant, sailor-for-hire, to messenger of the other side—of the reality that there exists another side—of the need for an acknowledgement that what the modern world is missing is moral judgment. Unfortunately, it takes Conrad and Coppola a trip into Hell up rivers into the wild jungle to finally break on through to the other side.
In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness there is the “bond of the sea” that establishes the familiarity,...
References
Conrad, J. (2009). Heart of Darkness. CT: Dover.
Coppola, F. F. (2001). Apocalypse Now Redux. LA: Miramax Films.
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