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Inherent inside every human soul is a savage evil side that remains repressed by society.
Often this evil side breaks out during times of isolation from our culture, and whenever
one culture confronts another. History is loaded with examples of atrocities that have
occurred when one culture comes into contact with another. Whenever fundamentally
different cultures meet, there is often a fear of contamination and loss of self that
leads us to discover more about our true selves, often causing perceived madness by those
who have yet to discover.
The Puritans left Europe in hopes of finding a new world to welcome them and their
beliefs. What they found was a vast new world, loaded with Indian cultures new to them.
This overwhelming cultural interaction caused some Puritans to go mad and try to purge
themselves of a perceived evil. This came to be known as the Salem witch trials. 
During World War II, Germany made an attempt to overrun Europe. What happened when the
Nazis came into power and persecuted the Jews in Germany, Austria and Poland is well
known as the Holocaust. Here, human's evil side provides one of the scariest occurrences
of this century. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi counterparts conducted raids of the ghettos to
locate and often exterminate any Jews they found. Although Jews are the most widely known
victims of the Holocaust, they were not the only targets. When the war ended, 6 million
Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, and others targeted
by the Nazis, had died in the Holocaust. Most of these deaths occurred in gas chambers
and mass shootings. This gruesome attack was motivated mainly by the fear of cultural
intermixing which would impurify the Master Race.
Joseph Conrad's book, The Heart of Darkness and Francis Coppola's movie, Apocalypse Now
are both stories about Man's journey into his self, and the discoveries to be made there.
They are also about Man confronting his fears of failure, insanity, death, and cultural
contamination.
During Marlow's mission to find Kurtz, he is also trying to find himself. He, like Kurtz
had good intentions upon entering the Congo. Conrad tries to show us that Marlow is what
Kurtz had been, and Kurtz is what Marlow could become. Every human has a little of Marlow
and Kurtz in them. Marlow says about himself, I was getting savage (Conrad), meaning that
he was becoming more like Kurtz. Along the trip into the wilderness, they discover their
true selves through contact with savage natives.
As Marlow ventures further up the Congo, he feels like he is traveling back through time.
He sees the unsettled wilderness and can feel the darkness of it's solitude. Marlow comes
across simpler cannibalistic cultures along the banks. The deeper into the jungle he
goes, the more regressive the inhabitants seem.
Kurtz had lived in the Congo, and was separated from his own culture for quite some time.
He had once been considered an honorable man, but the jungle changed him greatly. Here,
secluded from the rest of his own society, he discovered his evil side and became
corrupted by his power and solitude. Marlow tells us about the Ivory that Kurtz kept as
his own, and that he had no restraint, and was  a tree swayed by the wind (Conrad, 209).
Marlow mentions the human heads displayed on posts that showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked
restraint in the gratification of his various lusts (Conrad, 220). Conrad also tells us
his... nerves went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending
with unspeakable rights, which... were offered up to him (Conrad, 208), meaning that
Kurtz went insane and allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. It appears that while
Kurtz had been isolated from his culture, he had become corrupted by this violent native
culture, and allowed his evil side to control him.
Marlow realizes that only very near the time of death, does a person grasp the big
picture. He describes Kurtz's last moments as though a veil had been rent (Conrad, 239).
Kurtz's last supreme moment of complete knowledge (Conrad, 239), showed him how horrible
the human soul really can be. Marlow can only speculate as to what Kurtz saw that caused
him to exclaim The horror! The horror, but later adds that Since I peeped over the edge
myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare... it was wide enough to embrace the
whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness...
he had summed up, he had judged (Conrad, 241). Marlow guesses that Kurtz suddenly knew
everything and discovered how horrible the duplicity of man can be. Marlow learned
through Kurtz's death, and he now knows that inside every human is this horrible, evil
side.
Francis Coppola's movie, Apocalypse Now, is based loosely upon Conrad's book. Captain
Willard is a Marlow who is on a mission into Cambodia during the Vietnam war to find and
kill an insane Colonel Kurtz. Coppola's Kurtz, as he experienced his epiphany of horror,
was an officer and a sane, successful, brilliant leader. Like Conrad's Kurtz, Coppola
shows us a man who was once very well respected, but was corrupted by the horror of war
and the cultures he met.
Coppola tells us in Hearts of Darkness that Kurtz's major fear is being white in a non
white jungle (Bahr). The story Kurtz tells Willard about the Special Forces going into a
village, inoculating the children for polio and going away, and the communists coming
into the village and cutting off all the children's inoculated arms, is the main evidence
for this implication in that film. This is when Kurtz begins to go mad, he wept like some
grandmother when, called back by a villager, he saw the pile of little arms, a
sophisticated version of the escalating horrors. What Kurtz meant by escalating horrors
is the Vietnamese army's senseless decapitation, torture, and the like. Kurtz is facing a
new culture and has a terrible time dealing with it. This was the beginning of his
insanity.
All America contributed to the making of Colonel Kurtz, just as all Europe produced Mr.
Kurtz. Both Kurtzes are idealized in their function as eyewitnesses to the atrocities.
What is reflected is the threat of loss of self, loss of centrality, and the displacement
of Western culture from the perceived center of history by those whom it has enslaved and
oppressed (Worthy 24). This tells us that the evil side and the madness in both Kurtzes
was brought out by the fear of new cultures different from their own, and their inability
to deal with this fear. The disconnection between the opening words of Kurtz's report By
the simple exercise of our will, we can exert a power for good practically unbounded and
the note on the last page, Exterminate all the brutes! illustrates the progressive
externalization of Kurtz's fear of contamination, the personal fear of loss of self which
colonialist whites saw in the uncivilized, seemingly regressive lifestyle of the natives.
Gradually, the duplicity of man and reality merged for the two Kurtzes, one in the Congo,
and one in Vietnam. As this happened, the well defined cultural values masculine/feminine
and self/other that had specific segregated roles, could not be sustained in the Congo or
in Vietnam. For the Americans in Vietnam, as for the colonialists in Africa, madness is
the result of the disintegration of abstract boundaries held to be absolute (Worthy 24).
As it attempts to confront the 'insanity' of the war through Kurtz' s madness, that of
the filmmakers, and the madness of U.S. culture, Hearts of Darkness exposes the
contradictions between the inherent hierarchy and inequality within the cultural forces
of the United States and official democratic principles, which led to the perception that
it could waste what it viewed as insignificant little people and preserve its own image
in the world. Along with that is the growing realization, since the Tet Offensive of
1968, that the U.S. was somehow way off the mark (Worthy 24). American Culture views it
self as correct, and we see ourselves as powerful police of the world. Our culture looked
down upon the Vietnamese because they were more simple than us, just as Europe and Marlow
looked down on the Africans. Believing ourselves to be superior, we had a lot of trouble
dealing with the discovery that we are not.
Coppola makes a point to show us that the Chief of a boat armed to the teeth was killed
by a native in a tree who threw a spear. Not even an advanced Navy boat can defend itself
against some simple natives armed only with spears. This opens Captain Willard's eyes to
the horror of the situation he now finds himself in.
Even more intriguing, however, is the similarity between the transformation of the
characters in Apocalypse Now, and the cast and crew that created it. In Hearts of
Darkness, (a documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now.) Eugene Coppola becomes the
narrator ( a Marlow or Captain Willard) and Francis becomes Kurtz.
Francis believed that only if he could duplicate Willard's experience, could he
understand his moral struggle. In other words, he had to lose control of his own life
before he could find the answers to the questions that his narrative asked (Worthy 24).
Coppola's main horror was his fear of producing a pretentious movie. Eleanor repeatedly
calls the making of Apocalypse Now a journey into Coppola's inner self. Coppola, like
Kurtz, is regarded as a deity. Moreover, while Willard stalks Kurtz in Apocalypse Now,
Coppola stalks himself, raising questions which he feels compelled to answer but cannot,
finally announcing his desire to shoot himself.  He means suicide, but the cinematic
connotation of the term, to shoot, jointly criticizes both the U.S. and Coppola's film
for exercising a demented self-absorption (Worthy 24). Coppola had to deal with perhaps
the most agonizing of his troubles: his shriveling self-confidence. As the budget soared,
as the producers worried, as the crew and actors grew restless and dispassionate, Coppola
worried that he did not have what it takes to finish the film. He struggled with the
ending, with his own creative ability, and with his sense of purpose.
Martin Sheen, who plays Captain Willard, is the one who really faces the horror. During
the filming he has a nervous breakdown and later a heart attack. Some of his co-actors
believed that Martin was becoming Captain Willard, and was experiencing the same journey
of self discovery.
We live our lives sheltered in our own society, and our exposure to cultures outside of
our own is limited at best. Often, the more technologically advanced cultures look down
upon those that they deem to be simpler. On the occasion that some member of one culture
does come into contact with another, simpler culture, a self discovery happens. Both
cultures realize that deep down inside, all humans are essentially the same. We all
posses a good and an evil side, and no culture, not matter how advanced, is exempt from
that fact.. This discovery often causes madness as this evil side is allowed out. Only
those who have completed the journey into self can understand the actions of people such
as Kurtz. They are alone in this world of horror...
The Horror!
Works Cited
1. Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Coppola. With Martin Sheen, Robert Duval, and Marlon
Brando. Zeotrope, 1979.
2. Conrad, James. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Great Britain, BPC paperbacks ltd.
1990.
3. Hearts of Darkness. Dir. Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper. Paramount, 1991.
4. HEARTS OF DARKNESS -- A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE., Magill's Survey of Cinema,
6-15-1995.
5. Worthy, Kim, Hearts of Darkness: Making art, making history, making money, making
`Vietnam'..,Vol. 19, Cineaste, 12-01-1992, pp 24.