General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJust watched "Apocalypse Now" and am confused about the ending
why would Col. Kurtz allow Willard free reign in his compound, knowing Willard was sent there to kill him?
winetourdriver01
(1,154 posts)Kurtz, I think had a bit of a God complex, among other things. His "subjects" thought of him as a god as well. When Willard killed him, he took Kurtz's place in the minds of those people.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)Mike 03
(16,616 posts)Doesn't he even give Williard a speech. " (If I were to be killed)..I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything, everything I did, everything you saw..." (It's been twenty years since I've seen it, but parts of that speech are etched in my brain.
Kurtz gives what seems like a full confession. He wants to leave this earth.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)but Kurtz' followers had every opportunity to kill Willard.
Look at what they did to poor Chef.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)their ability to distract from a pointless, empty life. I imagined Willard was someone Kurtz could allow to kill him, lots of identifying with one's enemies in literature.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,371 posts)The big book Willard was carrying as he left.
LuvLoogie
(7,014 posts)Willard also wants to survive, and would need to escape. Kurtz is still a superior office and I imagine, even in this situation, that military bearing still applies.
greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)He's dying anyway. He wants to die by the sword, as it were.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)I didn't get that he was dying.
Perhaps I need to review it.
greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)Mike 03
(16,616 posts)Do you mean of an illness, like malaria? Or you mean a spiritual/psychological death.
You could be right.
My take was always that he was exhausted from living inside his own mind and wanted Williard to kill and replace him.
It wouldn't work if he killed himself. There had to be a replacement.
SQUEE
(1,315 posts)He even instructed Willard to end the society he had created with his "EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES" command in his diary. His creation would not work without him, and his nihilism demanded it be wiped out. He commanded the people, but he was also disgusted at their allegiance and worship.
Cirque du So-What
(25,949 posts)Kurtz is broken mentally by the savage war he wages, wants Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering.
Goonch
(3,608 posts)himself broken mentally by the savage war he had waged, wanted Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering.
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)Are y'all plagiarizing from Cliff Notes on an Internet message board?
Goonch
(3,608 posts)greenjar_01
(6,477 posts)"Willard succeeded in his mission only because Kurtz, himself broken mentally by the savage war he had waged, wanted Willard to kill him and release him from his own suffering."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Kurtz
HOLY SHIT!
USALiberal
(10,877 posts)TEB
(12,863 posts)When my sons and I take the boat out bass fishing chef when him and The captain ran into the tiger. Ours was a skunk when our one son we were night fishing had to defecate on this island he came flying back on the boat screaming skunk go dad go . Yup he held it till we got back to boat ramp.
Towlie
(5,326 posts)That's more relevant to current events because there are a lot of people going out to party and have a good time right now, in the midst of a rapidly worsening pandemic.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)CHARLIE DON'T SURF!!!!
Towlie
(5,326 posts)Major: "This place is still pretty hot. Maybe you oughta surf someplace else."
Colonel Kilgore: "What do you know about surfing, Major? You're from goddamn New Jersey."
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)Towlie
(5,326 posts)Actually, it goes like this:
"This L-Z's still pretty hot, Sir, maybe you oughta surf somewhere else."
"What do you know about surfing, Major? You're from goddamn New Jersey."
http://www.smacaw.com/surf.wav
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)THANKS!!!!!
edhopper
(33,591 posts)Have you ever known any surfers?
dweller
(23,644 posts)Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad?
compare/contrast the two, pls deliver 500-1000 word essay by
3/31
homeschool, Catwoman
✌🏼
pecosbob
(7,541 posts)Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarnsand even convictions. The Lawyerthe best of old fellowshad, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitledthe great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquestsand that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Eriththe adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned generals of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairwaya great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
And this also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth....
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)I have to order the book first.
I'll take an "A" for effort
Zorro
(15,742 posts)dweller
(23,644 posts)CatWoman
(79,302 posts)dweller
(23,644 posts)ok, you get an extension thru summer
😍
✌🏼
edbermac
(15,941 posts)I remember this scene when he finally got to the end of the river.
Scott Glenn as Captain Richard M. Colby, previously assigned Willard's current mission before he defected to Kurtz's private army and sent a message to his wife, intercepted by the U.S. Army, telling her that he was never coming back and to sell everything they owned, including their children.
C_U_L8R
(45,003 posts)Bev54
(10,055 posts)saw this movie in the 70's.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)Bev54
(10,055 posts)watch it again and maybe I will be able to understand it now. I was in my early twenties when I watched it. I never understood Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky either, but I will skip it.
Buckeyeblue
(5,499 posts)Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)The part of Kurtz that was revulsed by him playing god wanted Sheen to explain things to Kurtz's son.
maxrandb
(15,336 posts)because he knew that one day, someone broken like him would become president, but that person wouldn't have a conscious or feel guilt.
Kurtz didn't want to live to see that.
wiggs
(7,814 posts)that embrace, for both he and Willard...a final and inevitable gesture.