5 - foggy rivers, blurry lines.

"I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core." Heart of Darkness

"Civilized" man, in a sense, is hollow. We lack, or like to think we lack, that dangerous, beautiful, primal core that catalyzed humans to the top of nature's chain. After our dominance was established, we, as a race, became more complacent, tame, empty. "Uncivilized" man, in a sense, is also hollow. We lack the grace of manners, prudence, subtlety. Survival remains the focus of day to day life. Both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now examine the blurring of the already hazy line between "civilized" and "uncivilized." What happens to civility in an inhospitable climate or culture like Vietnam or Africa in the choke hold of imperialism? What happens to the human soul in the heart of darkness?
In Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness, "civilized" man's transition is stark. In the film, the All-American boys become prisoners of fear whose only sense of freedom is the right, the encouragement, to kill that which is threatening. The white men in Heart of Darkness follow a similar path – imprisoned by fear, liberated through superficial conquer. In both stories, the irony lies in the fact that the "civilized" people are regressed by the very culture they are there to "civilize." The ease with which the soldiers in Apocalypse Now and the white men in Heart of Darkness are transformed reveals the hollowness of civilization. They are almost like blank canvases – beings defined solely by what takes hold of them. They have no solid sense of who they are. They are – we are – innately empty.
Why then is Kurtz so dangerous? If all civilization imposed upon these "savage" lands falters, what makes Kurtz so different from everyone else? He, in both film and novella, is imprisoned not by fear like the others but by power. Kurtz did not make a clean shift from "civilized" to "uncivilized". He straddled the line, compounded the hollowness of both groups within himself. He disregarded the manners of his former life while keeping them at the same time. He immersed himself in the primitive brutality of the jungle while staying above it at the same time. These two hollows within his soul sum to more than emptiness. They become darkness.
Kurtz is accused in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now of insanity, but in actuality, he is threatening because he had more sense under his circumstances than everyone else. He did not succumb to fear and abandon his celebrated past. He took advantage of his setting and played deity because he was cognizant enough to know that he could. While the rest of the army or Company was cowering away from the darkness, Kurtz, in a strange show of bravery, became a part of it. How ironic that in the midst of war, fear, not valor, is the only acceptable reaction.
Hollow is not dangerous. Emptiness, to some degree, is what we are all used to, "civilized" and "uncivilized." Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now illustrate the panic caused by even a single man who has begun to make a powerful statement out of his blank canvas and the confusion as to what such an action makes a him – uncivilized for drowning himself in primitive, pagan idolatry, or more civilized than any for his ability to see beyond the fog of fear? The line is blurred, and it is this uncertainty, like the hidden nightmares beyond the fog on the river, that shakes the empty souls of men.