The Question of Sanity and Insanity in Coppola’s film “The Apocalypse Now”

The Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on Joseph Conrad’s novel The Heart of Darkness is a provoking and a powerful film, the power of which lies within all the questions – real brain twisters - which we, the viewers, ask ourselves. I guess that’s why it is difficult to say what the politics of the movie really are. One could say that the title itself calls for some sort of apocalypse, for the end of something, and as we see, it is the end of the insanity and the absurd of not only the Vietnam War, which is the theme of the film, but any war. However, the Apocalypse Now is not merely a simple statement of the Vietnam War; it invites the viewer to the path of insanity and when he comes close to it, it slaps him in the face, leaving him wandering about what ‘insane’ in fact means and if the meaning of it really accounts to the definition. The definition of the word ‘insanity’ in the Webster’s New World dictionary goes:” any form or degree of mental derangement or unsoundness of mind, permanent or temporary, that makes a person incapable of what is regarded legally as normal, rational conduct or judgment: it usually implies a need for hospitalization.« According to this definition the questions that come up in the film are not who is crazy or insane and who isn’t. The film already proves the madness, insanity and corruption of the Vietnam War, but it goes further in demonstrating the result of that insanity and corruption, which, as we see, leads to an apocalypse. The paradoxical question that is central is who the horror of the war made more insane and if we at all have the right to judge Kurtz an insane man and call him a murderer.

Focusing on the aspect of sanity and insanity in Apocalypse now, we see that there is no end to the discussion of the topic. One can come up with a conclusion but there is always a ‘but’ to it. And the reason there is always a ‘but’ to it is because all is relative when we consider the serious philosophical issues of the civilized and uncivilized, the rational and the irrational, the sane and the insane in the context of war. Who created the definitions of these words, who set the rules and who is breaking them? Even if we look at the issues of sanity and insanity from the ‘civilized’ perspective, the answer is relative. The definition says that an insane person is incapable of what is regarded legally as normal, rational conduct or judgment. What happens in a war already isn’t ‘normal’ or ‘rational’, especially not in the Vietnam War. Willard expresses this paradox when he is assigned to exterminate Kurtz, who is charged for killing four South Korean double agents, and because his “actions have become unsound”: “Shit. Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.” As Coppola shows in the film the involvement of America in Vietnam was unnecessary and insane, because the Americans were “fighting for the biggest nothing in history.”

Coppola demonstrates the insanity of the characters through sailing into the darkest orbits of the human psyche (symbolized through Willard sailing up the Nung River to find the king of the hearts of darkness Kurtz), where all the characters in the film seem to be lost in their own mental world, not knowing whether they are animals or God (or both). The whole U.S. conduct throughout the film is seen as insane, excessive, destructive, futile... (cf. Phillips, 439). “Everywhere he goes, Capt. Willard sees signs of drugged stupor, loud, large, yet ineffective, as in the haunting image of the helicopter burning in the tree by the river […]. One meaning: an insane war breeds insane behavior.” (Phillips, 441). American soldiers, without even knowing why and who they are fighting, removed from the commands, ‘lost it’ and quickly began subordinate all around them. They quickly fell under the temptation to take things into their own hands and play Gods. The process of this ‘loss of reality’ and taking things into their own hands is described suitably in the novel Heart of Darkness:

“Going up the river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. […] You lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had known once – somewhere – far away – in another existence perhaps […] The reality – the reality – I tell you – fades […]” (Conrad, 41-2)

The African train-ride

Painting by Nyanda

Never had I encountered life threatening dangers while on my expeditions, but traveling in Africa changed that fact. The following event did not only make me value life more, but it also made me wonder about the world’s mysterious ways and how everything in life eventually works out well.

The afternoon heat made everything fuzzy while we were waiting to get on the night train in Mombasa, Kenya. Our tickets were first class so we were waiting in front of the first two wagons. The conductor didn’t want to take our tickets for some reason – there seemed to be some sort of complications with reservations and since we didn’t really care what wagon we traveled in, we didn’t complicate things more and just let him take us to the compartment that was still free. Finally, we entered the fourth wagon at the very end of the train and traveled with the African natives. As the train finally took off at five o’clock, we stacked our luggage and our photography equipment underneath the beds and lay down. I stared out of the window, totally overwhelmed by the beautiful African landscape flashing by my eyes. Never had I seen a more beautiful sight. The setting sun made the sky look as if it was burning, the fire kissing the land beneath it as if they were lovers.

As it turned pitch black, I closed my eyes and drifted off into ‘never-never land’. Rain drops falling on the roof woke me up several hours later and made me want to pee. It wasn’t until I got up and looked out of the window that I saw it was pouring down rain. I went to the toilet and lay down again. The rest of my crew was fast asleep, so I made myself busy daydreaming about the future expeditions in beautiful Africa, reading stories my father had written when he was in Africa.

All of a sudden, the train stopped forcefully. All of us fell off our beds, holding to whatever we could, our hearts beating fast and furious. I could hear the water running outside. I figured it must have been a river raging somewhere nearby. A lot of people were screaming and the wheels underneath us were squeaking like thunder until, finally, the train stopped completely. Still, people were screaming and crying. We opened the door of our four-bed compartment to see what was going on, but the night was pitch dark and it was still raining pretty hard, so we couldn’t see anything. All we could hear was people screaming and water running furiously as if we were in the middle of a waterfall.

The clock turned one in the morning and we were still waiting in the train. Not knowing what was going on made me extremely nervous, especially because we knew something bad had happened. Some of the cries became more distant. On and on we waited for hours for the sky to get brighter and it wasn’t until four that it got bright enough for us to go out and see what was going on. There, in the middle of what seemed to be a never ending prairie, we walked to the tip of the long train, and saw the first two wagons had been swallowed by the river. Apparently, the bridge over the flooded river broke loose as the train tried to cross it. Some people were still alive in the wagons screaming for help, but none of us could save them because they were too deep down there for us to reach them. Besides, we had no equipment suitable to rescue them and the river was still raging. All we could do was stand there and watch the crying children and women dying. Dead bodies were piling up down there, hungry crocodiles waiting their turn to fill their stomachs. Standing there helplessly made me want to scream my guts out. There was absolutely nothing we could do to rescue the unfortunate souls who were drowning.

A man with a radio called for help, but the helicopters would not be coming for another four hours. We took our luggage and started walking towards Nairobi. None of us could speak. It wasn’t until we reached Nairobi and reported to the police what had happened that it struck me that we too should have been us among the two hundred people that died in the first two wagons that night.

What happened in the African prairie that night is something that seems like a distant nightmare – a nightmare which will always remind me of how valuable life is and that we should not take it for granted but be grateful to have it and cherish it day by day.

(This was written for my language-learning class; it is now my story, but it really did happen to some one else )

Here on Earth: a summary of the interview with David Monagan

Jean Ferraca’s “Here on Earth” interview with David Monagan discusses many facets of Irish culture, ranging from language, history, and politics to the present modernized Ireland. All of these issues are discussed through the views of the interviewer Jean Feraca herself, the author of ‘Jaywalking with the Irish’ and an American expat living in Ireland, and Tom McCarthy, an Irish poet and a native to Cork.

The interview begins with David Monagan’s descriptions of his life in the Irish-American part of Connecticut prior to becoming an expat in Ireland. In America, Monagan was surrounded by images of Irish culture, especially reading Joyce, Yates and his favorite Flann O’Brian, whose surrealistic, humorous and at the same time moving style represents Irish life for David. Love of Irish literature sparked his decision to study in Dublin in the early 1970s, after which he has been to Ireland on many occasions before moving there permanently with his family.

As a writer, Monagan finds it very stimulating to live in Ireland because he is constantly surrounded by poetic language. He enjoys the fact that even the most trivial conversations can flower with imagery. He believes that the Irish haven’t developed the gift of gab because of the oppression by the Brits in the past, as is believed by Jean Feraca, but that the poetic imagery of the Irish language has been around for millennia, possibly because of the romantic, misty, and rainy landscape.

Monagan can’t speak Gaelic, but he claims that the Irish language is very poetic. McCarthy agrees with him on that matter and further explains that there is great variation in the Irish language and that it varies from county to county. As an example, a song is played, called ‘Langer’, which is a typical Cork word. It is an insulting word but can be also used with affection. The Irish name the phenomenon where an insulting slang word is used with affection, "slagging".

The Irish culture has changed drastically in the past decade. The former secular country’s social life was highly dominated by the old tradition and the Catholic Church up to the 1970s, when Ireland was still fighting with poverty. Shortly afterwards Ireland started changing. Its population increased, it reached economic prosperity, and became modernized in the short time of only a decade. The Irish population has been coping with this rapid change with some difficulty, since the transformation from a rather poor condition to the economic boom and modernization had no ‘in between’ stage of industrialization.

Even though it’s become a modernized country, Ireland keeps many traditions such as several Catholic holidays and the country’s favorite sport, hurling. Two matches a year are of great importance to the Irish, almost equivalent to the American Super Bowl.

This interview gives listeners a good insight into the old and the new Ireland and its culture.

New words for today

That thing with learning 5 new words a day hasn't worked out yet. Oh, man! Sometimes it looks as if I am a chronic procrastinator, but believe me, I am not! There is just sooooo much to do this semester. I know it's my own problem to have 32 hours of classes a week...and a job...and I commute everyday from Slovenia to Graz...which takes about 4 hours of my time...No more moaning...I am learning words this very moment....so here we go....I need to refresh the old ones though. Activating new words in ones vocabulary is not as easy as I thought it would be....

The little kid didn't know what he was doing. He just couldn't discern right from wrong.
I used to live in the back of beyond, so when I finally came to a big city, I thought I was reborn in a world that was actually living.

Lucrative - Syn. fruitful, productive, gainful; profitable; juicy, remunerative; e.g.: Although it is very exciting it is not as easy and as lucrative as it may seem.