The enemy's homeland

As much as I hate not providing a significant contribution to a discussion, I'm afraid I'll have to be that guy.  As a man who has never read, nor has never even seen a physical copy of Heart of Darkness, I can not say I know a lot about the book, other than the fact that it follows the pattern of an ancient Greek myth.  Other than that, like I said, I don't know much at all about it other than the quotes that came from "An Image of Africa."  From what I got out of Achebe's writing and from class discussion I can infer that one of the only terms I can define this book as is controversial.  Aside from that, I noticed that Achebe does describe this book along vague, yet similar lines to Apocalypse Now (certainly not on purpose) in two ways that I can recall.  For one (and I'll make this brief to avoid confusion) I notice a slight theme of sexism in what I can view of Heart of Darkness.  And the only way I can really draw similarities is with the scene of the dancers in Vietnam, how they're portrayed as nothing but *ahem* "Sexy meatbags" to the soldiers.  In other words, females do NOT serve a huge purpose in either story, which of course is extremely degrading and unacceptable with modern [proper] standards.  The second and biggest thing I noticed, and I hate to bring it up because it was talked about so frequently in class, is the theme that the backdrop of the story plays a big role in both stories.  In Heart of Darkness we can draw from the fact that the author certainly used the African backdrop as a big role in his story, and for Apocalypse Now we see the Vietnamese being used as a backdrop.  And whilst I can't necessarily describe what exactly I'm talking about through text, the best way I can put it is that the fact that so little attention is being applied to the backdrop of both stories, it not only shows an example of severe disregard for the enemy's homelanders, but it also depicts the fact that the main character is so focused on himself that not much of their attention is even being diverted to the people who;s soil they're living off of.  I know I'm probably not making much sense at this point because it's a little late, but that's what I got out of it.