Heart Of Darkness And Apocalypse Now

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of the land"
(Dorall 303), he hears rumors of Kurtz's unusual behavior of killing the
Africans. The behavior fascinates him, especially when he sees it first
hand: "and there it was black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids- a head
that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry
lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling
continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal
slumber"(Conrad 57). These heads that Marlow sees are first hand evidence
of Kurtz's unusual behavior. The novel ends with Kurtz "gradually engulfing
the atrocities of the other agents in his own immense horror"(Dorall 303).
At his dying moment, Kurtz utters "The Horror! The Horror!', which for the
novel are words reflecting the tragedy of Kurtz, and his transformation
into an animal.
Apocalypse Now is a movie that is similarly structured to the book
but has many different meanings. The movie takes place during the Vietnam
War. The narrator is ...

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290). Essentially Kurtz has succumbed to
disease and starvation, and is basically being eaten alive as he nears
death. He had such a greed for ivory also. Kurtz exclaims "My intended, my
i vory, my station my river�"(Conrad 67). He believes that everything is
his that he had control. Marlow really can't believe that Kurtz thought
that everything belonged to him. Marlow's response "Everything belonged to
him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness
burst into a prodigious laughter�"(Conrad 67) gives us a sense that Marlow
really believes that Kurtz has taken on this idea that everything belongs
to him. Saying that everything belonged to him is quite ...

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