Comparison Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse NowHeart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad and "Apocalypse Now", a film directed by Francis Coppola are two parallel works but at the same time reflect their own time and the personal feelings and prejudices of their creator. "Apocalypse Now" was released in 1979 after two years of preparation, as Coppola's modern interpretation of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness (Harris). Conrad's book is an excellent example of the progress made by writers and philosophers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This advancement concerns the ability of civilized humanity to prepare for and know the unknown. (Johnson) In comparison, Copolla's film does the same thing in the late 1970s. "Apocalypse Now" dares to break the limits of soldiers' reason in a stressful and contested Vietnam War. One of the many similarities between Heart of Darkness and "Apocalypse Now" is race. Joseph Conrad and Francis Coppola both use white men as dominant characters (Bradley). The white men dominate not only their respective crews, but also the native peoples of the country visited by the white men. The character Conrad uses, Marlow, and Coppola uses his character, Willard, both look at the natives as if the white men were the civilized culture and the natives were the savage culture (Franklin). Both works also reflect the theory that "civilized" white men who go to an uncivilized country become savages and do not return to white civilization. An example of this in the book is Marlow's appointment with the doctor. The doctor measures Marlow's skull to compare its current size to that of his skull when he returned from the Congo. The idea is that the skull of a civilized man is a different size from that of a savage. When Marlow asks the doctor what the results of this test have been in the past, the doctor replies that there are none because no civilized person has ever returned from the Congo. An example of this in the film is when Willard confronts his own personality about whether or not he should carry out his military mission of killing Kurtz or aborting her. If he completes the mission he's still a civilian, if he doesn't the Vietnamese jungle has conquered him. The first soldier sent to kill Kurtz did not kill Kurtz, but actually became one of his followers..