A2 - Sunday News, January 10, 1982

The horror, the horror

E strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

I JUST finished re-reading Joseph Conrad’s
classic short novel, Heart of Darkness, upon
which the movie Apocalypse Now was based.

Apocalypse Now was of
against

course set the

NEWS
walks

plank

THE NEWS has been made
to walk the plank by B.C.
Ferry Corporation.

The North Shore's twice-
weekly community
newspaper became available
at the beginning of
November in vending boxes
on ferries sailing between

BHiorseshoe Bay and
anaimo.

This followed permission
granted last August by the
ferry corporation to install
the boxes on vessels serving
the Island for a three-month
trial period.

Sunshine Coast and
Bowen Island ferries have
been carrying the The News
for several years.

Last week A.A. Marshall,
B.C. Ferry catering
superintendent, informed
The News that his depart-
ment’s earlier decision had
been reversed and that

vending boxes on the
Vancouver Island ferries
must be removed _§im-
mediately.

By way of explanation,
Marshall cited a new policy
limiting newspapers sold on
the Island rus to the Van-
couver and Victoria dailies,
together with a Toronto

business paper.
Brian Ellis, News cir-
culation director, said

Marshall's sudden order to
withdraw the vending boxes
with one month of the
agreed tnal period sull to
come was “in
comprehensible”

“We had complied with all
conditions laid down” said
Ellis “Sales of the North
Shore News and Sunday
News on the Island run
during November = and
December had been very
satisfactory, with = sell outs
on several days

“We are investigating the
matter further with BC
Ferry Meanwhile. apologies
are certainly duc to readers
who travel that route ~

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background of the war in
Vietnam, whereas Conrad’s
novel was about a voyage up
a fiver in Africa in the
heyday of the British Em-
pire. °

Anybody who saw the
movie will recall — vividly
— the scene near the end
when Kurtz, played by
Marion Brando, moans:
“The horror! The horror!”

He was expressing the
anguish of a man who had
gone into the jungle to try to
win a war by using torture
and murder as a means of
terrorizing the enemy into
submission. And who, in the
end, could not bear the pain
he had inflicted.

In the book, Kurtz was an
ivory hunter imstead of a
renegade American soldier.

He was a remarkable man
with great charisma. He was
a spellbinding orator, the
author of a lofty pious tract.
And at the same time he was
a man who thought nothing
of robbing another man at
gunpoint or hacking off the
heads of recalcitrant natives
and sticking them up on
spikes around his trading
station.

He was by far the most
successful ivory trader
around. Normally, this

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would have made the
company he worked for
ecstatic. But his methods
had finally gotten too brutal,
his personal power too great.

The people above him in
the company felt threatened

’ by his success. There was a

fear that Kurtz had gone
mad. They decided that he
had to be removed. And so
an expedition was sent up
the river to fetch him.

The secret of his
domination of the natives
was a brutality that ig their
own primitive terms they
found awesome.

In the novel, the great
moral theme is the con-
tradiction between the white
man's professed desire to
raise the natives out of
darkness and his persistent
habit of exploiting them.

Conrad seems to be saying
that the corruption of the
highest is the worst. His
character, Kurtz, is an in-
tellectual giant among the
mediocre merchants he
deals with.

Once alone in the jungle
he cannot resist the temp-
tation to behave like a god.
The barbarism of the natives
— there were cannibals
among them, according to
the story — was of no help to
them against Kurtz's

superior armaments and his
willingness to be the most
savage of the savage.

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In Conrad's words, “he
lacked restraint.” He
believed he had a Christian
duty to whip the natives into
line so they could eventually
be saved.

It is the old story of the
cross in one hand and the
sword in the other. It is the
story of power
corrupting and men feeding
on their own megalomania.
It is the old story of
realpoliuk hitched to a
vision, and of greed
rationalized.

Finally, it is the old story
of men failing to restrain
themselves.

Upon re-reading Heart of -

Darkness, I was impressed

with how faithfully its theme |

had been followed in
Apocalypse Now.

It is great art indeed
whose message is good a
whole era later. Maybe
several eras later. But what
is depressing about it all is
the fact that despite all our
science and philosophizing
in the last century, the
human situation doesn't
seem to have changed at all.

The people portrayed by
Conrad in his time are still
around. Power of all kinds is
subject to precisely the same
abuses. Everyone still feels
superior to someone else.

Unbelievable savagery
persists.

And sometimes one still
does want to say: The

horror! The horror!

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