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Apocalypse now: Based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness


Analysis of Willard’s Journey

U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard has returned to Saigon, in Vietnam. He is deeply troubled and apparently no longer fit for civilian life. A group of intelligence officers approach him with a special mission: go up-river into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, a former member of the United States Army Special Forces. It is then when the lighting and mood darken as the boat navigates upstream and Willard’s silent obsession with Kurtz deepens.

Willard's journey as Marlow's in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness can be divided into three sections: the outer station, central station and the inner station. These three regions have increasing levels of isolation and 'darkness'. In Apocalypse Now these same three sections are used, however they have been changed slightly to suit the Vietnam setting and environment. The outer station is represented by Lieutenant Kilgore's camp,central station is represented by the Du Lung Bridge and Kurtz compound in Cambodia represents the inner station.

Another interesting point of analysis is that through extensive drug use, characters, including Lance, Chef, Clean, and the Photo Journalist, were able to lose touch with reality, run away from an inferno in which they were trapped. As the audience is made fully aware of this drug use, the apparent insanity of the characters does not seem unrealistic and therefore retains its impact as a mode of self exploration for the characters. Drug use is know to have been widespread in US soldiers during the Vietnam War, making this to be an excellent use of a 20th century issue in portraying a Heart of Darkness topic.

The idea of insanity as a result of into the 'Heart of Darkness' is a dominant theme both in Coppola's film and Conrad's novel The Sampan scene, in which a boat load if...