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The Shallow Differences:
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The First Two Acts:

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Act Three:

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Kurtz:
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Themes:

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Willard:

From the outset, Willard is different from his counterpart in the novel. Marlowe is a proper gentleman, sheltered and naive but a firm believer in the Crown's directives. Willard, by contrast, is introduced to us a jaded and traumatized vet drinking himself to death, the type of man who slashes his fist open on his own mirror during a drunken fit and has to be carried naked to the shower by lower-ranking men. What turned Willard so cynical is never discussed. We never learn about his background -- whether he's an educated officer or an enlisted man promoted on the battlefield, what kind of family he comes from. And Willard, unlike Marlowe, has doubts about his mission from the start. But he carries it out nonetheless.

He observes the napalm strike and massacre by the aircabs. He watches as the family in the Vietnamese boat is destroyed. He sits quietly while Clean is killed by friendly fire and ducks through a chaotic outpost without lifting a finger either to help the American soldiers or to defend the Vietnamese. He infiltrates Kurtz's camp and wanders freely there for days, never interfering with Kurtz's tyranny. Nor does he react to the dead Cambodians hanging from trees or the heads rotting on Kurtz's front steps. Willard is in many respects a passive observer, but this passivity marks him as different, makes him seem somehow impervious to the fever of war. He can't be goaded into firing his gun or emotionally manipulated into rescuing the innocent. It's not hard to believe that something inside Willard makes him better than the other men: more thoughtful, less fanatic, an independent thinker who resists groupthink and herd mentality at all times.

But is that a proper reading of Willard? There are two moments when his immunity breaks. The first is when he kills the wounded woman on the Vietnamese vessel. The second is when he assassinates Kurtz. Was it right to kill that woman? Was it right to kill Kurtz? Maybe Willard thought so. Maybe he didn't. What these two moments reveal is that Willard, for all his thoughtfulness, is not immune at all. He doesn't kill Kurtz because he believes it's right, nor out of mercy: he does it because that's what the American government ordered him to do.