The two main themes of Heart of Darkness are the conflict between “reality” and “darkness”, and the idea of ​​moderation and whether or not it is necessary. Conrad's passage describing the restraint of hungry cannibals exemplifies both themes: it describes how reality shapes human behavior and contrasts the characters of Kurtz and Marlow. “Reality,” as used here, is defined as “that which is civilized.” Conrad emphasizes the idea of ​​what is real versus what is “dark,” what is civilized versus what is primitive, what colonizes versus what is colonized, repeatedly in Heart of Darkness. As stated above, "real", in this case, contains all the implications of a civilized society: clothing covering a person's sexual organs, control of the throat, constant reliance on watches as dictators of action, etc. passage face a horrendous conflict between what is real and what is “dark” or, in their case, what is natural and what must be held back. Marlow cannot understand how these “great powerful men, with little capacity to weigh consequences” can restrain their desire to consume him and the pilgrims: “Moderation! What possible moderation? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear, or some kind of primitive honor? No fear can resist hunger, no patience can wear it out." The “darkness” that these men hold is the part of every person that desires fulfillment, the Id in psychoanalytic terms, the part that almost every orthodox religion despises. As in any civil society, which requires some form of government, citizens are expected to limit, to some extent, their most basic desires. This theme can be taken further and the message in the center of the paper describing the cannibals exemplifies both. Cannibals practice a kind of enigmatic control that prevents them from satisfying a basic human need; on a second level, they are faced with the question of what is reality (what is civilized) versus what is natural. Although there is no concrete evidence that these people are cannibals, the natural solution to their hunger is to eat, and they don't do it. Marlow, the symbolic character of the reality of civilization, practices this moderation, a sort of religious emulation of what he has seen of civilized peoples up to that point. Kurtz, on the other hand, has abandoned moderation, entered the “darkness,” so to speak. “How horrible! How horrible!” he utters on his deathbed, perhaps expressing contempt for his own actions, perhaps for all of existence. Perhaps to reality and the limits of civilization.