Heart of Darkness, Hollow Men, and Apocalypse Now Essay examples -- Mo

Similarities between Heart of Darkness, Hollow Men, and Apocalypse Now      Ã‚  Ã‚   In today's literary world there are many different texts that have interlocking literary meaning through their references to one another and to other works. I am going to compare and draw similarities between T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. These three sources have many different references to one another in different ways. In T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men, he begins the poem with the title and underneath the title he uses the famous line "Mistah Kurtz- he dead" from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This famous line is said by one of the servants about Mr. Kurtz who dies and all of the natives were shocked by his death. Eliot uses this line at the beginning of the poem because he is drawing a comparison between the hollow men and Kurtz. He does this because Kurtz's idea of the civilization that he wanted to create didnÕt turn out the way he wanted it to in the end. Kurtz's ideas lead to his downfall in the movie Apocalypse Now. He is also considered as being hollow himself because of his ideas and inability to face reality. This is similar to the hollow men because they don't know what they will turn out to be. They have an idea of what they want to be but they know that will never happen. The hollow men really have no choice what they will be; they just let it happen. These hollow men are waiting t o go to "death's dream kingdom", but they donÕt know if they will ever get there. Eliot talks about these hollow men and these men can be compared to the people who are following Kurtz. They are all hollow people because they are following this radical figure and do not have i... ...Hollow Men. They show many similarities and there is reasoning behind the scene in the movie Apocalypse Now; where Kurtz is reading Eliot's poem. It all is tied together and has specific meaning. It shows that different literary sources can be used to help out other literary texts. Conrad's Heart of Darkness lays down the foundation of the character of Mr. Kurtz and then Eliot and Coppola portray this character through their pieces of art. Their literary meanings tie all of these works together to make them all unique in their own way. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Norton. New York. 1963. Eliot, T.S. The Hollow Men. 1925. Jain, Manju. A Critical Reading of the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot. Oxford University Press. New York. 1991 Southam, B.C. A StudentÕs Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot. Faber and Faber. Boston. 1968.