Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, and Apocalypse Now, a movie by Francis Ford Coppola can be compared and contrasted in many ways. Heart of Darkness takes place on the Congo River in the Heart of Africa while Apocalypse Now is set in Vietnam. .
Characterization in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are almost identical. The stock characters in both have the same general personalities but have different names. In the movie, Willard who is a lieutenant for the US Army is sent into the jungle on a mission to locate and kill Kurtz, and in the novel Marlow who is a captain of a steamboat of an ivory company also, has mission to find this mysterious Kurtz that he keeps hearing about. Kurtz is the central character in both the novel and movie. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz, is an ivory trader who has gone too deep into the jungles of Africa in search of ivory. A conversation with the manager leads Marlow to believe that Kurtz is a remarkable and distinctive man, who is very ill at the time. When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, he is truly amazed at the type of man Kurtz is. Marlow desires to kill Kurtz at first, but as he converses with Kurtz his mindset is changed. As Marlow proceeds away to the inner station he hears rumors of Kurtz's unusual behavior of killing the Africans. The behavior fascinates him, especially when he sees black, dried head with closed eyelids around Kurt's place. These heads that Marlow sees are first evidence of Kurtz's unusual behavior.
While in Apocalypse Now, Kurtz is a high-ranking officer in the military who has disobeyed orders and is now fighting the Vietnam war with his unit in his own fashion. The character of Kurtz is very similar in both the novel and the movie. He is a man with a reputation for being powerful and mysterious . And example of this is in both movie and novel what people are saying about him: "You don't talk to this men , you just listen to him.
