Expert: James Edward Kelley - 2/5/2012

Question
i have to write a paper on this topic question " In what ways did Marlowe observe the European lack of efficiency tacking the wilderness? " I've read the book but i am so lost in this topic question. If you have any answers to this could you please give me some paragraph ideas on i could write? please and thank you

Answer
Hi, Christian.

You might want to explore specifically the first chapter to find an answer to this question.  I'll help,though.  What Marlow discovers at the beginning of his journey to the Belgian Congo is how blindly Europeans follow their handed down tradition of empire".  He realizes first hand that no rational thought is put into the European's colonizing of Africa.  The prime mistake the empire-builders make is treating the natives as inferior specimens of humanity instead of utilizing the knowledge that the natives have of their own respective countries.  Marlow's Aunt represents the empire-building mode of thought here when she says that she hopes Marlow more or less can train those savages into submission.  Instead of focusing on ways to help the natives build a better society for themselves or a richer society for themselves they "attack" the wilderness with their own sense of shallow, narrow-minded superiority and treat them like animals.  Not a way to go about engaging with an unknown culture.  The idea the Europeans had that the Africans were savages actually gave them the impetus to be savage, themselves while the African natives were living comfortably within their own culture.  The African natives definitely saw the European colonists as the savages and indeed, especially the Belgians, they were.

James