Blog #5 The savagery! The paradox! The darkness!

"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory fave the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath-- "The horror! The horror!" Heart of Darkness, Conrad, page 130.

In both Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, Coppola and Conrad show that although many think they are more "civilized" than others (such as those in Africa or those in Vietnam), we are all really on the same level of savagery. Sometimes those that are believed to be more civilized are actually more savage-like than others. One of the biggest examples of what is though to be someone who is a good, civilized man who ends up being savaged is displayed through the character of Kurtz in both the novella and the film. In Heart of Darkness Kurtz is shown as a great man of The Company, and in Apocalypse Now he is shown as an honorable military man. In both situations they are wanted dead; either by The Company or the army. And as their deaths play out we see how savage-like and brutal everything really is. For example before Kurtz is killed in Apocalypse Now we see how savage like he has become by hanging and chopping off the heads of many of the members of his community, but rather than ending the brutality by his death, the actual death is brutal in itself. By Coppola showing mixed shots of the hacking of Kurtz and the hacking of the animal into peaces, we see that the more civilized character of Captain Willard is performing just as brutal of an act as the act of Vietnamese village men. This scene coupled along with both Kurtzes saying "The horror! The horror!" when they die, shows the paradoxical aspects of the novella and the film. What is paradoxical is the fact that there is almost no way to end savagery but by a savage act. Like how the only way stop Kurtz from his savage acts was my murdering him. Another paradoxical aspect is that it almost takes one to perform such a savage-like act to fully grasp the depth of the "darkness". For example, although Marlow obviously encounters many dark moments throughout his journey, everything finally "hits home" after experiencing Kurtz's death. This was shown by him saying "I have never seen [it] before, and hope never to see [it] again." Overall, all of the paradoxical aspects of war is what pretty much creates the darkness of war, and it takes one to experience that and act savagely themselves to realize the true darkness. What makes one have to experience it for themselves is the fact that those that do experience the brutal darkness seem to cover it up and not explain their experience; either because they don't want others to experience the same thing, or because they don't want to revisit their own experience. This was shown by Marlow lying to Kurtz's fiance about his last words. The only thing colonization really does is tame and cover up this darkness, and this is why many are still under the impression that they are more "civilized" than others, when they really are not at all.