Personally, what I took from the novel is that the white man is not entitled to everything, that maybe the only thing that the West brings will not result in progress, but destruction of itself. The Prices came into Africa with their American ways, believing that they can pick up their lives in the States and drop it in the middle of the Congo, expecting the people to agree fully with everything they say. They went in not understanding that a vibrant community with its own culture was prospering. They almost had to die to get back out. The Congo was bloody as the white man exploited the black man to get rich. Yet what we don't realize is that the forest is living.
What's interesting is that in Western literature and Western culture, we expect everything to be linear. That through cause and effect, there is a beginning and an end. In African literature and culture, everything is cyclic; there is no beginning or an end. The forest that they entered will continue to eat itself to grow.
Ruth May said, "If I die I will disappear and I know where I'll come back. I'll be right up there in the tree, same color, same everything. I will look down on you. But you won't see me" (173).
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