This is the end…

In the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and the movie Apocalypse Now directed Frances Ford Coppola there are two characters that can be compared. Even though the movie is based on the novel, the movie is very distant from the novel, but retains many primary elements of the novel. These two characters I'm talking about are Georges Antoine Kurtz from the novel and Colonel Kurtz from the movie. Both characters are key to their somewhat similar stories. In fact I think that both characters are equivalent in meaning and effect to the story. Because both were powerful persons in respective environment and around them revolves the plot and the climax of the story.

The two characters suffered from illness Kurtz from jungle fever and Col. Kurtz from malaria both diseases I think are the same back then at the time of the novel people didn’t have the medical knowledge that we have now and I think that jungle fever is the same as malaria. Both Kurtz characters were powerful persons that in the jungle were respected and feared by their enemies. Both figures were radical and committed in their way of thinking and made them won the respect of who surround them. The meaning of the characters is also the same both characters justify the actions that condemn them. In example in Apocalypse Now Col. Kurtz says that moral terror and horror are necessary to other persons outside conflict and both Kurtz figures help developing the characters of Marlow and Willard respectively to their story both admire Kurtz but they really knew them then their persona change them. Willard and Marlow saw the world with different eyes when they meet Kurtz.

My opinion is that both stories are very similar they are not the same because the movie is other context. Back then to Conrad the European colonization was the darkness and for Coppola the Vietnam war was the darkness of their time.