oes not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes whatLincoln called the better angels of our nature." This quote explains what General Cormanbelieves is the good and evil in every human and how the good is the rational thinking.While the evil is an irrational thinking. Traditional interpretations of light and darkness tend to associate light withgoodness and purity, and darkness with evil and corruption. Marlow describes hisinterpretation of the darkness in his journey with these words, "True, by this time it wasnot a blank space any more...a place of darkness. But there was in it one river especially,a mighty big river... resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, itsbody at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land...thesnake had charmed me." (p. 11) However, in Heart of Darkness, the definitions oflightness and darkness has been reversed. Darkness can be interpreted to stand for thepurity and innocence of the natives lifestyle, while lightness can be seen as thecorruption, greed, and exploitative ways of the white men. The natives lived by the codeof nature in a sort of "darkness," in that they had not been exposed to the corruption ofthe civilized world. In the movie Apocalypse Now, light and darkness are also portrayed in thesense that whenever the soldiers were going into an area occupied by the enemy it wouldbe at a time of darkness, this would indicate that the darkness was a sign of evil and badluck, somewhat the opposite of the book. Although when the soldiers were attacked onthe river it was midday which would imply that the light might really be the time oftragedy. Characterization in Coppola's movie has been an exact replica of Conrad's novel.The reader is first met with the character Marlow, who is careful and important in hisstory telling, just as in the book version. Willard who is supposedly Marlow is sent intothe jungle on a mission, which is to fi...
