The Hollow Men

"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!'"
-Heart of Darkness
"This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."
-Apocalypse Now

In both Heart of Darkness and "Apocalypse Now", there is a focus on endings. The endings come in many forms and ways. The end to sanity, the end of power, the end of a way of viewing the world around you. The above two quotes are perfect to show how the stories end and how the other ends within the stories come about. Kurtz's death in the two stories are both different, and yet similar. In the book his life truly does end with a whimper as apposed to a bang. While in the film, the cause of Kurtz's death is violent and what one could consider a "bang", his actual death is the same as that in the book, and the death of Kurtz's power with the locals, which comes when Willard emerges from the place where Kurtz was living, is a whimper as well. The followers of Kurtz see Willard and lay down their weapons to show him that he may leave peacefully. Willard even talks about how, before he kills him, Kurtz is "waiting" for him, and "wanted" him to do it(kill him). Willard shows how Kurtz has even brought about his own end with a whimper. The whimpers from the two Kurtz not only signal the end of their world with their lives, but the view of the world that Marlow and Willard had before. Their views are dying through the journey to Kurtz, they both even allow themselves to be seduced by Kurtz's ideas, but when Kurtz dies, for both narrators, the world is shed in a more cruel and different light that neither had seen before. Marlow moves on with his life, after paying a visit to Kurtz's intended, but is forever changed. Marlow's change is shown at the end of Heart of Darkness when the waterway that once showed promise and new beginnings now seems to "lead into the heart of an immense darkness." Willard's change is shown as the movie starts. While waiting in the hotel for a mission, he states, while narrating, that after the mission he would never want to go back to the jungle again, while before he couldn't wait to go back.
When one thinks of the word "whimper" one thinks of a scared or fearful noise, or a hurt sound. In the novella, Kurtz's whimper comes when he utters his last words, "The horror! The horror!" In this whimper Kurtz shows how fearful Kurtz is of what his world has become, what he has become. The "horror" that Kurtz refers to is the horror that he, and men like him, have created themselves. In the movie, the horror is the war and, once more, the evil that he has seen and become himself.
Both the movie and the novella end in a peaceful way that would not be considered a bang. In the novella, Kurtz dies, Marlow gets sick, recovers, and goes on with life. The movie's ending is much simpler. As Lance and Willard begin their journey back to Vietnam, there is a scene of a helicopter flying over a burning forest with Willard's face imposed upon the scene as well and the only thing left after a repetition of Kurtz's last words is silence.