A Journey Through Hell: Epic Archetypes In Dante, Conrad, And Coppola

As you get closer, things start to get darker. It is harder to discern exactly what's in front of you, but you know that whatever it is, it's just going to be worse than what passed behind you. You squint. You're tired. You've seen too much already and there's only more, worse things to see. You hear shrieking. You hear stillness. There is commotion and there is nothingness. The air is getting damper – more fetid. You can't breath. You can't breath, and you can't see. You begin to ask yourself, "Why? Why am I here? What am I doing? What do I have to gain from this?" The answer is that you don't know, yet. You hardly know anything, yet. But as you continue to get closer, you do know one thing – exactly where you are – the deepest, darkest depths of human suffering and depravity. Hell.

The "journey through hell" story has been modified and adapted through time in both literature and film, manifesting distinct attributes around a central, requisite core of archetypal elements; in Dante Alighieri's The Inferno, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux, a unique journey through hell was respectively adapted for contemporary society based on underlying parallel foundations that contribute to the same feeling of surreal, epic descent into an impetuous vortex of darkness and destruction.

For the discussion of The Inferno, a distinction between "Hell" and "hell" must first be made. In this paper, "Hell" will be very specifically Dante's Christian conception of the fiery depths of eternal punishment for sinners deep beneath the earth. In a more general sense, "hell" will be any sort of extreme suffering, whether it is embodied by a physical place like the Congo River or Cambodia, or simply psychological personal torment. The crux of this paper, then, will be the comparison of three hells: Hell, the Belgian Congo, and Cambodia.

There are two major archetypal elements in a "journey through hell." The first is the setting, which includes not only physical, topographical elements, but also the movement through them and the general residents of them.

Inferno is a story that moves deeper and deeper into the earth, into Hell. It is characterized many times throughout as being dark and gloomy, often shrouded in mist. As Dante peers over the brink and looks straight down at the diminishing circles of Hell, he sees a "desolate chasm / […] / so depthless-deep and nebulous and dim" that there appears to be "no bottom" (Inferno 4.8-12). The Second Circle of Hell is described as "stripped bare of every light" (Inferno 5.28). The Fifth Circle with the Styx River has a "mist" over the water (Inferno 8.53). Finally, deep, deep inside Hell, in the Central Pit of Malebolge, among the Giants, it is "less than night and less than day," Dante's eyes making out "little through the gloom" (Inferno 31.10-1). Deeper into earth, things not only naturally get darker farther away from the sun, but metaphorically, Dante gets closer to the anti-sun, the anti-God, the epitome of darkness: Lucifer.

The inhabitants of this place, an integral part of the setting, are all the sinners in the history of mankind, especially Florentine history. They are frightening and pitiable at the same time, often characterized first by the different noises they make, heard from a distance, than by their eventual appearance later. Stepping into the Gate of Hell, Dante is first met by frightening sounds of extreme suffering:

Here sighs and cries and wails coiled and recoiled
on the starless air, spilling my soul to tears.
A confusion of tongues and monstrous accents toiled
in pain and anger. Voices hoarse and shrill
and sounds of blows, all intermingled, raised
tumult and pandemonium that still
whirls on the air forever [...] (Inferno 3.22-8).

These wails are from the sinners, the "natives" of Hell, and they cause Dante to hold his head in horror and pity (Inferno 3.30).

Similarly, Heart moves deeper upriver, deeper into the Belgian Congo. There is also darkness, gloom, and fog. As Marlow zips along the western coast of Africa, on his way to the mouth of the Congo River and the beginning of his journey into the heart of darkness, he sees "the edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, […] blurred by a creeping mist" (Conrad 78). Later on the river, on his way to the Inner Station, he watches the waterway run on "into the gloom of over-shadowed distances" (Conrad 105). Marlow and his crew are penetrating "deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness" (Conrad 108), a metaphorical as well as literal statement about the ultimate darkness – the heart of darkness – of man: Kurtz.

The natives of the Congo are characterized as having "deathlike indifference" (Conrad 82); they are "nothing earthly now – nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom," as "free as air – and nearly as thin," so much so that Marlow feels like he has "stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno" (Conrad 83). The allusion is key, because as these natives are like black ghosts or spirits, so the "natives" of Inferno are as well, called "waifs" throughout, only they are metaphorical rather than literal phantoms. Moreover, both are black; in Heart, this blackness is literal while in Inferno, the blackness of the sinners is figurative. Also similar to Inferno, at one point on the river, these natives let out "a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desolation," followed by a "hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive shrieking," almost "as if the mist itself had screamed," causing Marlow's hair to stand on end (Conrad 113). To both Marlow and Dante, the cries of natives are frightening testaments to wretched desolation and suffering.

Apocalypse, as an adaptation of Heart (Messier) moves deeper upriver as well, along the Nung River, deeper into the heart of Cambodia. Willard travels with a tight-knit crew on a little plastic navy PBR patrol boat. The river is often enshrouded in mist or smoke as they journey upward, but the augmenting darkness is more metaphorical than literal. As they move upriver, they see a woman throw a grenade onto a helicopter with wounded soldiers in it, a tiger in the dark green jungle, downed helicopters along the bank of the river, a Sampan boat completely massacred because of a puppy, Do Lung Bridge, a madcap battleground that seems to have no commanding officers, and eventually Kurtz (Apocalypse). All are representative of increasing figurative darkness, surreal events or sights that highlight the darkness of the jungle, the darkness of man, or the darkness in the blending of both.

The natives of Apocalypse, Vietnamese and Cambodians, are not characterized as ghosts directly, but the soldiers try very hard to dehumanize them. They are often referred to as "Charlie" or "gooks" (Apocalypse), slurs that are meant to make them less than human, and therefore OK to kill. The faces of individual Vietnamese are not really shown onscreen for very long, or focused on very much; it gives the viewer the same sense that the soldiers have: these people are faceless, passing by one after the other in a blur, simply a dangerous part of the landscape. They are not people or individuals; they might as well be just ghosts of the jungle.

The differences in the settings among Inferno, Heart, and Apocalypse reflect the differences in the authors' respective societies and purposes. For Dante's Florence in the 1300's, Hell was the perfect conception of hell, for the Medieval Ages were a God-fearing, guilt-ridden time, in which daily life revolved around the Roman Catholic Church. Everybody feared Hell, and to write of it would be to strike deeply into people's hearts; Dante used Hell to sharply criticize his world, including many Florentines and Popes among legendary sinners. He wanted a purer, more Christian society, and thus he attacked those that did not fit his view of moral virtue by placing them in his Hell. Conrad, similarly, wrote of the Belgian Congo also as a criticism of his society. The world was being dominated by European powers playing the imperial game, trying to gain protectorates and colonies around the world for economic, religious, moral, cultural, and political reasons. Conrad was a first hand witness to the horror, the subjugation that imperialism brought to native peoples everywhere, especially in the Belgian Congo, where King Leopold was known for committing unspeakable atrocities. Thus, the Belgian Congo was Conrad's perfect conception of hell at the time, a perfect setting to criticize the western world's sudden obsession with imperialism. Coppola, like Dante and Conrad, also had things to say about his society. The Vietnam War had just been fought, a bitter time for Americans and the American government. It was being called the United States' first defeat in its otherwise successful military history, and numerous anti-war protests and anti-anti-war sentiments had torn the country apart. Coppola obviously was part of the former camp, criticizing in his film the deaths and meaningless atrocities of the war. The deaths of Mr. Clean, Chief, and the Chef are bloody, graphic, and absurd (Apocalypse). The health of hale Col. Kilgore is equally absurd given his relative guilt and the other three's relative innocence in the war (Apocalypse). For Coppola, the Vietnam War was the perfect conception of hell, and he criticized it and all that it strived for in almost every scene. He also tied the movie closer to Heart in a strange French plantation scene, in which French neo-colonialists hold out for decades, tired of their country's innumerable losses (Apocalypse). They live in a little enclave in the jungle as the last French "colony," Coppola thus relating the imperialism criticized in Heart with the Vietnam War as two of the same fabric.

The second major archetypal element is two requisite major characters and one, more flexibly interpreted minor character. The first major character, the protagonist, is the naïve hero who has never experienced hell before, suffering through the insufferable in search of some sort of truth or understanding of himself or humanity. This search can be either conscious or unconscious, but in the end, a transformation to some sort of more enlightened or calmer state is achieved. Such truth comes through the second-hand witnessing of hell.

Inferno follows Dante, in danger of succumbing to the sins of worldliness, journeying from Purgatory to Lucifer in order to understand sin. His purpose for undertaking his journey is clear: he "went astray from the straight road" and now has to make his way out of the "dark wood" to a shining hill of light by way of a very long detour: Hell, then Purgatory, then Heaven (Inferno 1.1-110). Dante's increasing callousness and decreasing sympathies evidence hi increasing understanding. He has two early swoons for two relatively lukewarm events: once when crossing the Acheron in Canto 3 and the other when meeting Paolo and Francesca in Canto 5 (Ciardi 47). However, as he continues to descend, he witnesses far worse things, yet his emotional reaction decreases; no longer susceptible to grief, pity leaves him, and he "even goes so far as to add to the torments of one sinner" (Ciardi 47): deep in the final circle of Hell, Dante harasses Bocca Degli Abbati by yanking on his hair and kicking his face (Inferno 32.97-123). This is not the same Dante that swooned after hearing a pitiable story of love and loss. He has hardened himself against every sympathy for sin (Ciardi 47); he has come to finally understand sin, understand himself, and reach a higher awareness. He has gone through hell.

In comparison, Heart is the story of Marlow (Gillon), a sailor who goes to Africa to seek the unknown only to find horror. His purpose is defined in the moment he walks into a London shop as a child and sees a giant map of Africa with blank spaces on it: "When I grow up I will go there" (Conrad 71). The sight of the Congo River, the prospect of the unknown, charmed him like "a snake would a bird – a silly little bird" (Conrad 71). Thus, Marlow undertakes his journey into darkness to appease an inner childhood desire for the unknown, a desire that leads him into a new awareness that somehow seems to "throw a kind of light on everything about [him] – and into [his] thoughts" (Conrad 70). Due to the structure of the novel, a frame-story, we first see Marlow already in his enlightened state, years after the central story of Heart. The novel opens with him on a ship on the river Thames, talking with shipmates. He is described as a "Buddha preaching in European clothes" sitting calmly, self-assuredly, as enlightened as a sailor can be (Conrad 69). This is Marlow after he has run the gauntlet and borne the scars of which the reader is about to hear. In this nirvana state, sitting in a circle with others in the darkness, he reveals his superior understanding and awareness by interrupting a shipmate's thoughts about the glory of England that has passed through these waters with a short, curt, incisive reminder that England too "has been one of the dark places of the earth" (Conrad 67). His perception of his country from an enlightened point of view from without rather than his shipmate's ignorant point of view from within suggests a similar perception of his own self; as Marlow sees England from a more holistically encompassing and more historically profound perspective, so he probably can see himself and his existence as well. As Marlow narrates, he reveals the source of his superior self-awareness. In the beginning, he is naïve, feeding a dying native a little biscuit as if his pity and compassion could change the world, or even change the dead man's fate. Months go by. A spear goes into Marlow's helmsman, and blood is spilled at his feet and all over the deck, yet Marlow can only think about getting new shoes. He has become number, which means he is learning. Days go by. Marlow sees the shrunken heads of people deemed "rebels" by Kurtz, stuck on poles like decoration, and Marlow's reaction is of mere surprise more than shock. Time passes on, as does Kurtz. Marlow returns to Brussels to meet Kurtz's Intended, lying to the weeping woman's face that Kurtz's last words were her name. He thinks the house will collapse upon his lie, "that the heavens would fall upon [his] head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle" (Conrad 164). This is Marlow's final lesson in his self-education and accounts for his "pose of a meditating Buddha" at the end of the novel (Conrad 164).

Very similarly, Apocalypse shows Willard, a captain in the United States Army, on a mission to penetrate Cambodia and take out a wildly insubordinate colonel. He, like Marlow, naïvely seeks another mission, and "for [his] sins they [give him] one" (Apocalypse). Willard also learns of horror and, though not called a Buddha directly, he states in voice-over that he'd "never want another [mission] again" (Apocalypse). The use of voice-over throughout the movie is particularly effective in conveying a sense that Willard, like Marlow, has already "seen it all," and is giving the viewer a lesson on what hell can be; his voice maintains a deep monotone that expresses his inner calm and heightened state of understanding after the Vietnam War. The events that happen around Willard are horrific, but the turning point comes when Willard decides to shoot a wounded woman dead after his crew boards and searches a Sampan boat and guns down everyone because the woman made a move to protect her puppy. On the surface this act seems like terrible callousness and cruelty, making Willard as culpable of atrocity as anyone else in the film, but the voice-over explains: "We'd cut them in half with a machine gun and give them a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw of them, the more I hated lies" (Apocalypse). Willard has realized the hypocrisy of Americans in this war, and at the moment he shoots the woman that his crew wrongfully wounded, he rejects that hypocrisy for a higher standard of commitment; to kill was to kill and to aid was to aid. It is ridiculous to half-kill and half-aid. This sort of absolute commitment to a job is what propels Willard towards Kurtz, what possesses Willard as he hacks Kurtz with an axe, what restrains Willard when he has the opportunity to replace Kurtz as a god of the Montagnard army, instead getting in his boat and speeding away. Willard's journey has educated him to follow this straight, narrow, yet absolute path, almost like Dante's journey was an education for him to follow the straight and narrow path of sinless-ness. Willard has achieved his voice-over level of self-awareness.

The second major archetypal character is the central figure of hell. On the surface level, he can be seen as the antagonist, but on a deeper level, he is more of an anti-protagonist. He is the culmination of all the atrocities and suffering that have been witnessed before by the protagonist, and yet there are good things about him; this duality represents the ultimate nadir in perversion and darkness from something that once had promise.

Lucifer is this character in Inferno, sitting in the center of Hell and earth, a fallen angel of God bound for eternity in ice, surrounded by Hell's worst sinners. Certainly he is bad; he has three ugly heads that chew on the three worst sinners in the history of mankind: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. Yet he was once an angel, and innately within his perversion, darkness, and evil lies the fact that these are polar opposites of Lucifer's former self. The antithesis, the duality, strikes Dante – he can feel the sorrow of a being that "was once as beautiful as now / he is hideous" (Inferno 34.34-5). This character is thus complexly evil with the suggestion of good at the same time.

As Lucifer is bound in ice, surrounded by the ultimate of sinners, Kurtz in Heart is bound by the jungle, surrounded by native Africans who worship him like a god. He represents the heart of darkness, brooding in the Inner Station of the Congo River, a figure shrouded in mystery and ambiguity. By all accounts he was an extraordinary man, talented in verse, oratory, painting, and even music. Yet, "under his magnificent eloquence" was a small deficiency that compounded in fantastically cruel and unusual ways: "Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint" (Conrad 138). Kurtz's darkness thus is terribly ambiguous, especially embodied in his last words: "The horror! The horror!" (Conrad 159). Whether he meant it as a confession or a curse, his existence was shrouded in great darkness and mystery. As Marlow states, Kurtz had "nothing either above or below him […]. He had kicked himself loose of the earth" (Conrad 149). Thus, Kurtz, out of context anywhere, could never be judged.

Like Kurtz, Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse also broods at the end of a river in Cambodia, a figure equally shrouded in the same mystery and ambiguity, surrounded by a Montagnard army of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and even an American. He was also a brilliant man: a third generation West Point graduate, top of his class, groomed for positions in the upper echelons of the military administration. He was decorated with thousands of honors and medals. He was "almost too perfect" (Apocalypse). The contrast is similar to that of Kurtz in Heart, however. Col. Kurtz is evil. His enclave in Nu Mung Ba in Cambodia has dozens of human heads just lying around, reminiscent of Kurtz's Inner Station and Lucifer's Cocytus, where only the heads of sinners stick out of the ice. His moral position is further skewed with his close relationship with the supposed hero, Willard. Willard admires Col. Kurtz. Willard detests lies, as does Col. Kurtz. The close association of the hero and the villain thus perverts both of them ambiguously. The clue that Coppola gives audiences is in the lighting used with Col. Kurtz; his face fades in and out between totally black darkness and clear light. There is no gray on his face, just as there is no gray in his soul. He is simply the juxtaposition, not a blending, of black and white, of good and evil. His last words are the exact same as Kurtz's in Heart. As that Kurtz metaphorically kicked himself loose of the earth, Col. Kurtz also metaphorically "got out of the boat." Thus, both are equally ambiguous characters and neither can be judged in any context except their own.

There is also an important, but minor archetypal character associated with the beginning of the journey, a sort of person that launches the protagonist into hell as a startling introduction or welcome to the horrors that lie ahead.

Charon is the ferryman in Inferno who takes Dante and Virgil across the first river of Hell, Acheron, delivering them into the beginnings of darkness. His relative terribleness is probably not all that strong, but it is the beginning of Dante's journey, and coupled with the sight of the opportunists, it is too much and Dante faints.

Like Charon, the chief accountant in Heart serves as an introduction to the jungle, residing in the Outer Station. He is a mysterious figure who is impeccably dressed in all white, looking as if he were oblivious to the fact that he has lived in the Congo for three years. His presence at the beginning of the journey kind of surprises and shocks Marlow – the accountant takes such a blast-defying stance against his own lot as a colonialist in Africa. Though Marlow doesn't faint, his curiosity is certainly piqued.

Interestingly, Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse is in a way a combination of these two characters. He is also a ferryman of sorts, using his Air Cavalry First of the Ninth to transport Willard and his crew by helicopter to the mouth of the Nung River to begin their journey. At the same time, he is described as "one of those guys that had that weird light around him," much like the chief accountant was in white (Apocalypse). This light, moreover, comes from Willard's observation that "you just knew he wasn't going to get so much as a scratch" throughout the whole war (Apocalypse). This made him open to certain opportunities for fun during battle, like playing Wagner during a helicopter attack, or surfing on the beach during a "hairy" battle in "Charlie's point" (Apocalypse) The image of a bare-breasted Kilgore standing up straight and tall, with a giant-brimmed hat, urging his cowering men to come surf with him is also, like the accountant, blast-defying – literally. He stands erect as bombs go off everywhere around him. The surreal nature of Kilgore's presence and attitudes thus shocks Willard and his crew the same way the chief accountant in his all-white clothes piques Marlow, and Charon's presence causes Dante to faint.

And so, with the journey over, you return home. But things are not the same anymore, of course; things will never be the same. Things are enshrouded in a new, weird light, like the way things look when you step indoors after being outside in the sun for a long time, except this time, your eyes will never readjust. Your eyes have seen too much darkness, and your perception of light is now warped for good. This is the truth you have sought. God help you.

WORKS CITED

Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: Signet, 2001.

Apocalypse Now Redux. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford. 1979. DVD. Paramount, 2001.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. New York: Signet, 1997. 63 – 164.

Gillon, Adam. "The Appalling Face of a Glimpsed Truth: 'Heart of Darkness.'" Joseph Conrad. Twayne (1982): 68 – 77. Rept. in Short Stories for Students. Vol. 12. Literature Resource Center 2003.

Messier, Max. Rev. of Apocalypse Now Redux, dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Filmcritic.com 2001. 18 March 2003 .