Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" Author(s): Linda Costanzo Cahir Source: Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1992), pp. 181-187 Published by: Salisbury University Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43796548 Accessed: 09-10-2019 03:49 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Salisbury University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Literature/Film Quarterly This content downloaded from 143.107.252.211 on Wed, 09 Oct 2019 03:49:42 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Narratological Parallels in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now The theme of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is, as his character Charles Marlow states, the "fascination of the abomination" (31). The novella is a frame-story, won- derfully entangled by a narrative within a narrative, a flashback within a flashback, a series of quotes within quotes. It is a bildungsroman , an initiation into darkness and chaos, calmly framed by a prologue and an epilogue. Heart of Darkness opens with an unnamed narrator's account of an evening spent aboard the yawl Nellie. He and four other men had to wait at the estuary of the Thames for the turn of the tide that would carry their boat down the river. Like Chaucer's Pilgrims, Conrad's characters (in this frame portion of the story) are identified by their professions only; and they, too, passed the time in story-telling. The narrator relates to us one tale that was told to them that evening: the Sailor's story, or Marlow 's tale. The largest portion of Heart of Darkness is the narrator's verbatim recording and recounting of Marlow 's story as told to him that evening aboard the Nellie. Marlow 's tale, actually told to us by the narrator, is recited in Marlow's own voice; consequently, Marlow 's narrative, every single thing that he says throughout Heart of Darkness, is placed in ongoing quotation marks. Thus, Marlow's tale, seemingly spoken in Marlow's voice, is voiced, instead, by this unnamed narrator. His presence is so subtle that either we never really notice him or we soon forget that Conrad has positioned this disembodied voice between Marlow and us. Conrad causes something wonderfully magical to happen when we read Heart of Darkness. The mediating narrative voice, actually always present, vanishes and we believe that we are alone, face to face, in absolute solitude with Charles Marlow. Critics have debated at length the significance of this narratological structure. This paper contends that Conrad's narrative structure is inherently cinematic. The recording eye of Conrad's anonymous narrator functions much in the same way as the camera 181 This content downloaded from 143.107.252.211 on Wed, 09 Oct 2019 03:49:42 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Narratological Parallels/ 1 82 functions in a film: 1 Both interpose themselves (near-invisibly) between the teller and the listener; both function as narrators who control what we hear and what we see; and both are subtle, ongoing structuring presences which somehow fade from our consciousness. The recording eye of the camera and Conrad's interposed voice both function as narrative devices that create the illusion of an unmediated relationship between the taleteller and the tale hearer. Perhaps both function as a warning: No interpersonal communication can ever be fully unmediated. Thus, the structure of Conrad's narrative is, at the very least, empathie to the very nature of film. Francis Ford Coppola seemed alert to this in Apocalypse Now , his contemporary version of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Much in the same way as Conrad's narrator retells Marlow's story, Coppola's camera retells Benjamin Willard's tale. Although superficial details may change, the substance of the tale each tells is timeless, unalterable, and ongoing. Charlie Marlow understood this, and tells us so by prefacing his tale of the Belgian Congo with a reference to "when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago ... to face the darkness" (30-31). Man's fascination with the abomination, his initiation into the heart of darkness is the same whether the descent is made by a Roman journeying up the Thames, an Englishman up the Congo, or an American up the Nung. The atemporality of that journey and the compelling need the initiate has to tell and retell his story are assumptions inherent in both Conrad's novel and Coppola's film. Although the "story" told by the novel is quite different from the "story" told by the film, their "narratives" are surprisingly similar. The theoretical distinction between the two, the story and the narrative, is explained by Gerard Genette: I propose, without insisting on the obvious reasons for my choice of terms, to use the word story for the signified or narrative content (even if this content turns out, in a given case, to be low in dramatic intensity or fullness of incident), to use the word narrative for the signifier, statement, discourse or narrative text itself, and to use the word narrating for the producing narrative action and, by extension, the whole of the real or fictional situation in which that action takes place. (27) Thus, the story is the fictive account, the "who, what, when, and where" of the work; while the narrative is the text, itself, the particular structure, the specific manner in which (i.e., "how") the "story" is presented. Thus, Conrad's "story" is set in nineteenth-century Belgian Congo and centers on Charles Marlow, an experienced sailor who has been hired by a European trading company as captain of one of their steamboats. His primary responsibility is to transport the ivory, collected in Africa, back to the European company. In the course of his travels, Captain Marlow journeys up river and meets the infamous Mr. Kurtz, a man who the trading concern believes has grown far too rapacious, and is taking company-owned ivory as his own. In stark contrast to the novel, Coppola's "story" is set in twentieth-century Southeast Asia and focuses on Captain Benjamin Willard, a hired assassin in the American Army. Apocalypse Now tells the story of Willard's complicity in the Vietnam War, and his willingness to "Terminate with extreme prejudice" a fellow American Army officer: Col. Walter E. Kurtz, a distinguished Operations Commander in the Special Forces, a man considered "one of the most outstanding officers this country's produced" (i.e., he graduated from West Point at the top of his class, held an M.A. from Harvard, and had been awarded "about a thousand [military] medals"). Thus, Coppola's and Conrad's stories are radically different; yet, the narrative of each is splendidly similar. Both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are frame- stories with mediating narrators. In each the mediating narrator is simultaneously present and not present in the text. In both works, the tale proper is narrated in first person retrospect and the pattern of taletelling is remarkably similar. In both the novel and the film, our first view of the protagonist (Marlow/Willard) is that of a man radically altered by a past experience. Each tale-proper begins With the protagonist's explanation of how he got the appointment which necessitated his This content downloaded from 143.107.252.211 on Wed, 09 Oct 2019 03:49:42 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1 83/Narratological Parallels excursion up a river. Each river excursion is distinguished by three scheduled stops (a number rich in mythic significance); the third and last stop for each is the soul-altering confrontation with the mysterious Kurtz. Additionally, each narrative uses similar patterns of symbology and each employs the effects of sound and lighting in similar ways. Heart of Darkness begins (and ends) in a circumscribed space, on the yawl Nellie. The opening scene, one of considerable placidity, is a meditative moment. "The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unsustained light" (28). In the center of this serenely-lighted placidity, Charlie Marlow sits, "his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembl[ing] an idol." He has "sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, [and] an ascetic aspect" (28). We are cued early on: Clearly, Marlow is not like the others, (the Lawyer, the Director, the Accountant), aboard the Nellie. The scene is a conspiracy of visual images, sounds, and lighting; it seems to have been created supra- verbally (quite an accomplishment considering that the medium is the novel). The calm and orderly serenity apparent outside of Marlow creates an effective contrast to the tumultuous chaos within him. Apocalypse Now begins with that tumultuous chaos. A series of discordant images that dissolve, one into the other, and a haunting point-counterpoint of sound cue us that the inner life of Benjamin Willard's memories is being given outward expression. The scene is a visual and aural stream of consciousness. The fecund greenness of palm trees streams into the lethal green of wartime's noxious gases; the pointed fronds of the palm leaves conjure the fronds of helicopter blades.