From Heart Of Darkness To Apocalypse Now Study Of Narrative Strategy On Literary Film Adaptation

This paper probes the adaptation activity in depth, examines its effects on interdisciplinary discourse on novels and films, as well as on theories and definitions of novels and films within their own disciplines. Novels and films are two types of art. Without visual pictures there would be no film. Without language there would be no novel. Despite all the differences, they share a lot in common. No one can ignore the fact that film's connections to the novel, such as integral formal, stylistic, narrative, cultural, and historical aspects. The interdisciplinary study of novels and films is getting under way on a large scale nowadays.Narratology has played a key role in the process of literary film adaptation. By and large, narratology comprises three aspects:narrative text, story and discourse. As far as the text this paper is concerned, it deals with two pieces of classical art: the British writer Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness along with the American director Francis Coppola's literary adaptation film Apocalypse Now. Coppola transforms the African jungles of Conrad's Heart of Darkness into the Vietnamese jungles of Apocalypse Now. They both characterize the same"human nature"theme. How does this transformation become real? This paper regards these notions thereinafter: theme, character, circumstance, plot, point of view and focalization and so forth.