Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

Comparing and Contrasting Coppola's Apocalypse with Conrad's Darkness

While Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now is framed by the music of The Doors, Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, upon which the film is based, uses the narration of Marlow as a framing device for the murky tale of the "horror" that hides in the human heart. The difference in framing devices has more to do with the difference in medium and inspiration than it does in overall meaning (Greiff 188) -- and yet the music of The Doors provides a much bleaker context for the narrative that Coppola explores in Apocalypse Now than the stylishly literary and ultimately ironic narrative woven by Conrad. Coppola, in fact, updated the narrative in a number of other ways -- namely in the shift of time and setting from the Congo at the turn of the century to...
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