Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and “Apocalypse Now”:
I love “Apocalypse Now.” But if I compare with its original story, Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, the film would be no better than the book. The film has no choice to be so before the depth and greatness of the book.
So “Heart of Darkness” is a great book for me?
Oh, yes it is. But still the book has a lot of controversial things as follows.
(1) For Conrad the British imperialism was a great thing and the Belgian imperialism was a evil thing. But this is totally wrong! Both imperialisms are evil.
(2) For Conrad women must be out of it. This is also totally wrong.
“Heart of Darkness” talked about desires of men(/women). They were Money (ivory) and Honor (enlightening Africans). This time Love was not included because he had already got the Intended in his hands.
Did Kurtz (the hero of the narrator, Marlow) get two of them? The answer is no. He was addicted to Ivories and his methods for enlightening Africans are unsound.
So what made me think that it was a great book.
It’s View of Life and Death. Conrad wrote through Marlow’s voice that my last words should never be “a careless contempt for the evanescence of all things.” I couldn’t agree more on it.