The American War Cult

Chinua Achebe's essay "An Image of Africa" condemns Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as being "a book which parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of humanity has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today." His essay relates narrator Charles Marlow's zealous Euro-centrist and racist perspectives to Conrad's own sentiments. Additionally, Achebe challenges the analog of the Congo river for a descent into gruesome barbarism, despite the remarkable artistic contributions of this region to the modern world. Most significantly, he reflects on the implications of Conrad's portrayal both of the land and people: Sweaty-toothed, vulgar natives inhabiting a hypnotic and brooding wilderness. Not only does this portrayal perpetuate a dangerous caricature of Africa, it simultaneously relegates the African people to anonymity and the setting to an instrumental frame for European introspection.

Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 epic Apocalypse Now is largely inspired by Heart of Darkness. Thus, it has been suggested that the film is vulnerable to the same criticisms that Achebe had of Conrad's novel, due to its mystical portrayal of the Vietnamese jungle, its impersonal treatment (and, sometimes, outright dehumanization) of the Vietnamese people, and its fixation on the American experience in war. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that Apocalypse Now is not an absolute adaptation of Heart of Darkness, and its themes and sentiments are even contrary to those of the novel. And while it may fixate on the American experience at the expense of that of the Vietnamese, this is with purpose. Released only four years after the fall of Saigon and the defeat of the United States, this film offers a vivid illustration of the perplexity and absurdity of American involvement in the Vietnam War.

One defense of Heart of Darkness is that Conrad may in fact be offering a criticism or satire of European colonialism, with Africa as a frame for European transgressions. To this Achebe responds critically, commenting on Conrad's actual racism, as well as the portrayal of Africa as merely "a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril." Is Coppola guilty of the same damaging portrayal? Yes. Contrarily, however, the landscape of Vietnam exists as both an explicit and "metaphysical" battlefield solely because of American participation, rather than the inherent inhumanity of the soil. This is illustrated in Colonel Kilgore's assault of a Vietnamese village early in the film: The village enjoys the tranquility of its daily activity. The immediate assault afterwards vexes the horrors and violence that are otherwise ubiquitous throughout Vietnam. In one of the only scenes depicting the Vietnamese sans Americans, Coppola tantalizes his audience with a rare glimpse of humanity.

Additionally, while Lance does conspicuously "go native" by the end of the film, this is not to be confused with a depiction of Vietnamese primitivism. Rather, the costume that Lance adopts and the ideology that he subordinates himself to is that of the American War Cult. The soldiers of the American army are depicted as having insatiable savage appetites, which the Vietnam War cultivates and feeds. Lance ultimately acts a foil to his former civilian self, plastered in the war paint of the American army and salivating over the violence about him. Thus the renegade Colonel Kurtz becomes an exemplification not of Vietnamese tribalism, but rather an avatar for the absolute violence of the perfect soldier. Apocalypse Now perhaps suggests that when we fail to recognize humanity, we ourselves become less human.