I have to admit that this novel is one of my favourites,
and I also love the way that F. Coppola did an updated version of it in his excellent
film. Of course, the film focuses and comments upon the Vietnam war rather than
colonialism in general, but I think there are definite parallels between the two
texts.
One key difference between the texts is that Kurtz
in the novel is a station manager working for the Company whose job is to get as much
ivory as possible. Kurtz in the film, however, is an officer in the American Army whose
job it was to subdue the natives and hold a station deep
up-river.
Apart from this, there are mainly similarities:
both are deeply charismatic figures who subdue the natives in part through their sheer
charisma and rhetoric as well as through terror. Both are figures with incredible
promise, but who have "gone bad" because of their isolation and the arena they find
themselves in without any social checks on their behaviour. In the film, Kurtz is
assassinated by Marlow, whereas in the book, Kurtz dies from an illness. However, both
characters - the Kurtz in the film and the Kurtz in the book - act as a memorable
warning of the corruptibility of mankind - even the most civilised
example.
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