Blog 7 NC

Allegory is a way to express meaning about a subject without being explicit, as in sharing the same idea about a topic but not literally. In one way, the entire movie is an allegory for Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness,' as Coppola tells the same story but through use of the modernness of the Vietnam War. Most importantly, Coppola uses this allegory to tell the brutal nature of the Vietnam War and the savage nature of those that participated in it.

One of the most famous quotes in the film is Kilgore's "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... The smell, you know that gasoline smell... Smells like, victory." His name phonetically sounds like 'kill gore,' and his violent nature is an early moment of the film when viewers really get to see the message that Coppola is trying to convey. Another shocking scene is when the impaled Phillips tries to pull Willard onto the spear he was struck with. The primitive use of spears shows the brutality found in the war, but the attempt at fratricide is not completely understood and as such shows the unbelievable intensity and blood thirst the war caused, even for ones own.

The best known scenes detailing the Vietnam War involve Kurtz, and bring Coppola's message to its fullest meaning. Upon being brought into Kurtz' temple, the rampant cannibalism and insanity in his society bring to light the darkness of the film and the war. The final scene in which Willard kills Kurtz with a machete and his tribesman kill the bull in the same manner show the 'heart of darkness' that Coppola tries to reveal to his viewers, the idea that the Vietnam War brought out the worst in its participants and in a sense allowed the label of evil to be used. War is often described as dark and violent, but the evil that he paints in the film is not shown through killing and death but by the manners in which they occur. Willard could have killed Kurtz with a single quiet cut, but the rage in his face and the darkness that surrounds Kurtz show that the kill is more than war, it is human rage. The sacrificial bull is no different, and though it can be argued that evil does not play into religious sacrifice, the hacking of the bull and the chaos erupting in the scene show the uncivilized nature of the tribe and lack of respect for life.