Journey Into Darkness: Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, and Things Fall Apart
This essay examines the shared themes, symbols, and motifs in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, focusing specifically on the journey as a central motif. The paper analyzes how each work uses the journey to illuminate colonialism, psychological exile, and the darkness inherent in human nature. It compares the narrative roles of protagonists Marlow, Willard, and Okonkwo, and draws parallels between the Kurtz figures across Conrad and Coppola's works and Achebe's Okonkwo. The essay argues that all three narratives ultimately lead their central characters not toward enlightenment but toward a confrontation with human evil.
- Introduction: The Journey as a Shared Motif: Three works share the journey into human darkness
- Colonialism and the Cyclical Nature of History: Apocalypse Now reframes Conrad's colonial critique
- Protagonists, Narrators, and the Function of Character: Marlow, Willard, and Okonkwo as narrative vehicles
- Exile, Insanity, and the Heart of Darkness: Kurtz and Okonkwo as exiled, psychologically broken figures
- Self-Imposed Exile and Moral Responsibility: Characters bear responsibility for their own downfall
- The Journey as Vision Quest and Spiritual Reckoning: Journey serves different spiritual functions across works
- Irony, Destiny, and the Inescapability of Darkness: All journeys circle back to inescapable darkness
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay sustains a clear comparative framework across three distinct works — a novel, a film, and a postcolonial novel — without losing focus on its central argument about the journey motif.
- The parallel drawn between Kurtz (in both Conrad and Coppola) and Okonkwo is a genuinely insightful structural move that anchors the comparative analysis.
- The paper correctly identifies the narrative technique of the neutral observer-protagonist (Marlow, Willard) as a literary device that differentiates the three works while reinforcing the journey theme.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates cross-media comparative literary analysis, drawing connections between prose fiction and film adaptation while also incorporating a postcolonial text that reframes the same themes from an African perspective. This technique requires students to move beyond plot summary and engage with how form, perspective, and cultural context shape meaning differently across works that share common themes.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a broad thematic introduction establishing all three works and their shared motif. It then proceeds through a series of focused comparisons: first examining colonialism and the use of the Kurtz character, then analyzing narrative roles and protagonist function, then moving into the theme of exile and psychological deterioration. The final sections address moral responsibility and the ironic dimensions of the journey, closing with a synthesis that ties all three narratives back to the central claim about darkness and human nature.
Introduction: The Journey as a Shared Motif
Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, and Things Fall Apart share common themes, symbols, and motifs. Among the most salient of those motifs is the journey — the journey into the heart of the darkness that lies at the center of the human experience. Each of these stories conveys its central themes in different ways.
The earliest of the three is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, published in 1903. This novella tells the story of a British man hired by a Belgian multinational conglomerate engaged in ivory trading in central Africa — what is now the Congo. His journey into the heart of the dark continent allows Conrad to explore issues related to race, class, social power, and especially the degradation of human consciousness.
With his 1979 film Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola builds on the foundation Conrad established, using the Vietnam War as an overriding narrative while tracing the same themes related to a journey into the heart of darkness. That darkness remains a symbol for the evil latent in the human soul. The famous final words — "The horror, the horror!" — encapsulate the heart of darkness perfectly.
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe wrote one of the most impactful novels ever to come out of Africa in 1958. Things Fall Apart is unlike Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now in that it is unrelated to the other two stories and is told from the perspective of African rather than European society. Yet Things Fall Apart is also about a journey into the heart of the darkness of the human soul. Each of these three works uses the journey as a motif to symbolize the evil at the heart of the human experience.
Colonialism and the Cyclical Nature of History
Apocalypse Now is already symbolic, because it builds upon Conrad's story about colonialism in Africa and transposes the journey into the heart of darkness to Southeast Asia. Coppola uses Conrad's novella to convey similar themes about colonialism and exploitation in the context of the Vietnam War. His decision to retain the name Kurtz is especially significant: it not only anchors the viewer in more recent events but also suggests that history is cyclical, offering commentary on the enduring reality of war, conflict, and exploitation.
In this respect, Things Fall Apart differs from the other two works in that it does not share a common character. Nevertheless, colonialism remains a theme common to all three narratives, even as each work renders it differently.
Protagonists, Narrators, and the Function of Character
Okonkwo, the protagonist of Achebe's Things Fall Apart, bears a meaningful resemblance to the Kurtz figure in both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now. The main characters in all three stories serve overlapping symbolic and literal functions. Unlike Things Fall Apart, however, both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now feature protagonists who are not the most pivotal characters in their respective narratives.
The reader of Heart of Darkness and the viewer of Apocalypse Now are meant to identify most closely with the protagonist: Benjamin Willard (played by Martin Sheen) in Coppola's film, and Charlie Marlow in Conrad's novella. These protagonists do not appreciably change throughout the course of their narratives. They tell their stories in ways that invite the reader or viewer to project fully into the experience. Okonkwo, by contrast, is a fully realized character whom the reader comes to know but does not project onto. This literary technique differentiates the three works and facilitates the function of the journey symbol.
When the reader encounters Okonkwo, the protagonist's journey is presented as a story external to us. When the reader meets Marlow or the viewer meets Willard, there is instead a sense of being taken on one's own journey. Kurtz, in this sense, functions as a default protagonist — a symbolic catalyst whose journey has already occurred before the narrative begins. The reader of Heart of Darkness and the viewer of Apocalypse Now never witness how Kurtz arrived at that point. All that is known is that Kurtz lost his mind and now stands as a harrowing embodiment of the heart of darkness of the human soul.
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