Joseph Conrad once wrote: 'the individual consciousness was destined to be in total contradiction to its physical and moral environment'; (Watts 78); the validity of his claim is reflected in the physiological and psychological changes that the characters in Coppola's Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now undergo as they travel along their respective rivers, the Congo and the Nung. Each journey along the tropical river symbolizes a journey to discover the dark heart of man and an encounter with his capacity for harm. On this journey the characters regress to their basic instincts as they assimilate into an alien world with its primal dangers. In Heart of Darkness, going up the river is described as: “traveling back to the dawn of the world, when vegetation rebelled on the earth and great trees were king. An empty stream, a great silence and an impenetrable forest… '; (Conrad?). The river, which "resembles an immense uncoiled serpent... with its tail lost in the depths of the earth"; (Conrad ?), is “dangerous, dark, mysterious, treacherous, [and] hidden”; (Charles 32). When the characters are unable to resist the various temptations along this passage, they helplessly sell their souls to corruption. In both the book and the film, the various events along each individual journey help to illustrate not only the physical deterioration of the characters' environment and health, but also the psychological degradation of the characters' consciousness and consciousness. In both Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, the various dramatic changes in the environment since the beginning of the river journeys outline an increasing barbarity and savagery as the characters penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. The direction of both journeys is formally established as a movement from “open and boundless spaces to narrow and narrow spaces”; (Adelman 66), from sunlight to darkness. Projected towards the wild nature, each journey reflects a journey into the “darkness of dark distances”; (Conrad?). In Heart of Darkness, the rivers begin to narrow as the ships approach Kurtz's compound, and Conrad describes this last section of the river as "narrow, straight, with sides as high as a railroad track"; (?). In Apocalypse Now, the river near the end of the journey is between steep cliffs on either side; these men are symbolically trapped in this valley, with no chance of escaping the many horrors they face.