When one reads the novel Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and watches the movie "Apocalypse Now," common parallels will be found.

Authors Avatar

When one reads the novel Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and watches the movie “Apocalypse Now,” common parallels will be found.  Characterizations, themes, and symbolism remain mostly the same while the plot is changed.  The main characters in the novel, Marlow, and in the movie, Willard, when compared to the main character from the novel The Stranger, by Albert Camus, Meursault, similarities and differences can be found.  The contrast and commonness between Joseph Conrad’s novel and the movie help on to understand different ways of dealing with the situations when thinking of the previous novel by Camus, and how Meursault may have acted.

 The characterization in both the novel Heart of Darkness and the movie “Apocalypse Now” are mostly the same.  The main characters represent the same person in the same situations although the names are different.  In the novel Marlow was “a seaman…but a wanderer too” (pg. 67).  In the movie Willard is a Captain in the army.  Both, the novel and the movie, have the character of Kurtz. .  In the novel Kurtz is a Colonel while in the novel he is a trader.  Kurtz is depicted as a higher being, almost like a god, with his disciples (Apocalypse Now).  The novel shows Kurtz as a man of great power.  In both he is listened to.  “You don’t talk to that man – you listen to him” (pg. 127 and movie).  In the novel, when Marlow met Kurtz, he was very thin, “I could see the cage of his ribs” (pg. 135), but in the movie, when Willard encounters Kurtz, Kurtz is a large man.  Kurtz had an impressive career in his positions of work because he became insane.  In the novel he was known because he was an amazing trader.  “He is a very remarkable person” (pg. 84).  In the movie it was said that he had a very remarkable career.  Although Kurtz is depicted as being the same in the novel and movie, he is also different from what was said and his actions are different.

Join now!

        Other characters in the novel and the movie were similar and yet, some were mentioned in one and not in the other.  In the movie the man that greeted Willard when the docked at the station was an American photographer.  In the novel the man was “a white man” and he looked like a “harlequin” (pg. 126).  Both were the men that escorted Willard/Marlow to Kurtz.  The savages were represented in both by black people who followed Kurtz every word.  Another common character was the helmsman and Chief.  In both the movie and the fill, this was the man that ...

This is a preview of the whole essay