Chapter two opens with another stab at trying to figure out who Kurtz is and how he relates to the pilgrims. It also goes back to Marlow's problems with Africans. He sees the cannibals as okay guys yet he hates the men that are trying to keep their own land and livelihood. I thought it was very smart of Conrad to make it so that Marlow connected with the cannibals because it is kind of what he as been doing all along. Marlow and the other Europeans have been consuming the Africans (figuratively) and their resources (literally), while the cannibals have been literally eating each other. Marlow also sumises that it is okay that they are looking at everyone like a large t-bone steak as long as they haven't been able to eat anything in a long time. He understands that it is the Europeans fault because they have been working them so hard, yet he can't put to neurons together and think "maybe we should stop working the Africans so hard."
There is one huge connection between Dante and Heart of Darkness in this chapter and that would be the river that Marlow and his men take. The river Styx is the boundary between the mortal world and the underworld. Marlow and his men begin to go into their own kind of underworld as they delve deeper into the great darkness.
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