Heart of Darkness vs Apocalypse Now
In the article, "Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now" Linda Costanzo Cahir compares and contrasts both the novella and the film. Both writers had the same theme and meaning in mind, but their structure and technique was what made the stories different. In both the novel and the film, we see the central character (Marlow or Willard) as a man drastically altered by a past experience. Each story begins with the main character explaining how he was appointed to take the journey up the river. Both Marlow and Willard made three unscheduled stops with the crew. The third stop being the "soul-altering confrontation with the mysterious Kurtz" (Cahir 1). Although the plot is the same, the stories are different. Not only in the way they are told, but also in the way the main character endures the excursion. Linda Costanzo Cahir speaks about the "recording eye." The narrator serves as the "recording eye" in Heart of Darkness. Being invisible only between the teller and listener, the narrator sees what is going on and reports back to the reader. We see what the narrator sees just as we s
Both stories show several similarities such as the plot, the "recording eye," and the audience. In Heart of Darkness, the narrator is telling the story to the other people on the boat, while in Apocalypse Now, Willard is telling the story to the audience. But the story itself was for entertainment, not to bequeath a moral. I believe both men learned the lesson of existence in different ways. Both men are extremely disturbed and altered by this encounter. Linda Costanzo Cahir believes the separate tales of Benjamin Willard and Charles Marlow follow similar narrative patterns and arrive at similar truths. We are listening to this story told by Willard, just as Conrad's characters are listening to the narrator tell the story. The stories are similar in many different ways, but the stories are totally different in many ways also. Both writers had the same theme and meaning in mind, but their structure and technique was what made the stories different. "Like Chaucer's Pilgrims, Conrad's character (in this frame portion if the story) are identified by their professions only; and they, too, passed the time in storytelling" (3). Apocalypse Now is a more contemporary version of Heart of Darkness, retold through a camera. Cahir states, "Man's fascination with the abomination, his initiation in to the heart of darkness is the same whether the descent is made by a Roman journeying up the Thames, an Englishman up the Congo, or an American up the Nung" (4). Both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now follow a similar plot, but the stories are truly different.
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