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Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness .
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I chose to do this essay on the idea of story adaptation, and why changes are made to a story. I originally wanted to look at it just in terms of Apocalypse Now, and how the story of Heart of Darkness was updated to fit a different environment and time period, while still being true to many of the events, characters, ideas and themes presented in the story. I was curious about what changes were made, and what that indicated about how the director, and maybe society as a whole, felt about some concept that maybe were no longer acceptable or satisfactory. .
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However, when I started looking also at the biographical information about Conrad, it became clear that the story itself is an adaptation of sorts. Even though I already knew that Conrad had taken a trip similar to one Marlow takes, I had not been aware of the 'departures of adaptation' that were made to the story. In 1890 Conrad was given a captain's commission of a steamboat on the Congo, due to the influence of a female relative. He traveled down the coast and up the river, and hiked 200 miles overland to reach his boat, which was sunk. But from that point on the story is a departure. Conrad, rather than waiting and fixing the boat, enlisted on another steamboat and traveled up river, getting very sick along the way. On the way back down the river, the captain was sicker than he was, so he got to captain the boat then. When he finally reached the station where the boat he had a commission for was supposed to be waiting, he found that his job had been given to someone else, so he returned to England. .
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So why did he take what starts out looking like a fictionalized autobiographical account, and then half way through the story start being totally fictional? The important changes made seems to be that he is in charge of the boat, and thus is in control of his own journey to the heart of darkness.
