It was very interesting to read this, I now see Apocalypse Now in a different light. I have to say I prefer the movie to this book, I think it is a bit more mature, maybe a bit more considered, maybe a bit more focused. Having finished it I’m not sure of its exact message anyway.
In AN it seemed to me that Kurtz was venerated in the movie, he had seen through the veil to the other side, had suffered through the Vietnam war, in fact forced himself to suffer through it and as such had seen through to the other side of the human condition. He had in my opinion become something like a nietzschean uberman. He was trying to educate Wilard, help through to the other side, and when that failed, he gladly went to his own death, accepting it like his life. A fitting way to leave, considering he was sick and dying anyway.
In the book I think it is a bit more mixed up and difficult to understand because the values are very Victorian. Kurtz is painted more as a great man who has fallen to brutality. The main character seems to be the one who learns more because he retains his sanity whilst understanding Kurtz, not going through the trials that have stripped Kurtz of his sanity.
I can see why it was picked up and turned into a movie. The book is very visual and even more evocative of madness. The stupidity and destructiveness that surrounds Marlowe, the main character, are hellish in the extreme. It transposition to Vietnam make sense and make it more accessible to a contemporary audience. It creates a more understandable tension with a real human enemy and not the conceptual enemy of Dark Africa (though I have to say I do really like having a faceless, inhuman, conceptual enemy).
