Read TS Eliot , America's only decent export to Team GB
In the film, shortly before Colonel Kurtz dies, he recites part of T S Eliots poem "The Hollow Men" The poem is preceded in printed editions by the epigraph "Mistah Kurtz – he dead," a quotation from Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
Two books seen opened on Kurtz's desk in the film are
From Ritual to Romance by
Jessie Weston and
The Golden Bough by
Sir James Frazer, the two books that Eliot cited as the chief sources and inspiration for his poem "The Waste Land " Eliot's original epigraph for "The Waste Land" was this passage from
Heart of Darkness, which ends with Kurtz's final words
kn
owledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath –
"The horror! The horror!"
When Willard is first introduced to Dennis Hopper's character, the photojournalist describes his own worth in relation to that of Kurtz with: "I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas," from The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock
.
Additionally, Dennis Hopper's character paraphrases the end of "The Hollow Men" to Martin Sheen's character: "This is the way the ******* world ends! [...] Not with a bang, but with a whimper."
Wiki
