Status Updates From Dreaming Jungles (English a...

In regards to the war, the protagonist thinks of it in relation to nature, and realizes that by going to war, he is, " fulfilling an absurd duty, participating in an enterprise about whose undertaking he had not been consulted, in the name of an ethic whose murderous absurdity he felt deeply."

They return to civilization, informed about the outbreak of war in Europe, and given their assignments.

He returns to camp. Everyone is there. He admits his love for Lady Jane directly to her, and is filled with happiness.

He ends the research after having to kill a jaguar, and leaves the jungle carrying "a trace of violence and solitude, and the stamp of a permanent melancholy."

He senses a shift in himself away from intellectual realm to a more emotional side of himself.

He learns to hate the terror and brutality of the jungle, and looks forward to returning to civilization.

The protagonist does his observations and survives by adapting to the jungle, particularly by being on the lookout for venemous snakes and leopards, gathering fruit and eating small animals.

The protagonist and Lady Savile fall in love. The observations go badly. They split up into small groups for a month, with modest sucess. Lady Savile takes ill with fever. The protagonist heads back into the jungle alone ("into the heart of darkness") set on spending a year there.

She believes that altruism is a sophisticated form of self-interest.

Lady Savile trying also to understand the relationship between altruism and natural selection in Darwinian terms.

cont. he does not seem to have such a sophisticated agenda.

Lady Savile and the protagonist are working on different aspects of chimp behavior. While she is interested in aggression and dominance, the protagonist is a generalist, and wants to observe and draw conclusions based on his observations. And while she is interested in fitting her work into evolutionary theories,

It's hard to get back into flow after such a disruption - a long dull passage. This is a point at which I would have dropped off in days gone by and moved on to the next book.

The philosophical discussion was hard to follow and disjointed from the story up to this point. I'm uncertain what the protagonist's views are, or if it was all just a bunch of drunken nonsense.

They stop at a camp. The protagonist meets Lady Savile and others. They drink, discuss philosophy, verbally joust with each other. There is a hint of a non physical encounter with the Lady. He swims in a protected area with some beast - probably an alligator- trying to get in.

Lush jungle descriptions. The protagonist and his guide don't like each other, but have forged a working relationship. They travel on foot and by rafts made on the spot. The guide is a brute, wanting to beat one of the porters for being a bit too familiar, but is stopped by the protagonist.

The next morning, the governor introduces the protagonist to Jules Lefèvre, another brutish type, who is to be his guide. They agree on the guide's salary and other requirements, and begin preparing for the expedition that includes ten local men. They take the train north, segregated by class.

At dinner, the protagonist flirts with the moderately attractive wife of a busy railroad engineer, away on business, and ends up spending the night with her.

The governor meets the protagonist at the boat, and confides that he went to school with the protagonist's mother, and had a crush on her. The protagonist is creeped out by it.

The captain is a brutish character. The protagonist and the captain are clearly worlds apart. They agree to leave it at that.

The protagonist is met by Blanchot, (first secretary to the governor, a snooty fellow with a chip on his shoulder) and is coveyed to a small boat heading for Abidjan.

The book is rich with unusual vocabulary and Geography.

The docks are buzzing with a blend of the French dialect and words from the local language - referred to here as a comical patois (blend of language). It is interesting to note that there can be class distinctions embedded in the term.

A naturalist is heading out on a ship to study chimpanzees in the wild. He is disembarking in the port city of Grand Bassam, in the country of Côte D'Ivoire in Eastern Africa.