numberEIGHT.

Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significence to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.


The wilderness of the locale seemed to taunt me. Something in the mood of the place seemed to say mockingly, "I am not like your tame, manageable Canadian homeland. I am tangled. I am too dense to walk through. I am hot and steamy and drenched with rain. I am hip-deep mud and six-inch sago thorns. I am death adders and taipans and leeches and crocodiles. I am malaria and dysentery and filariasis and hepatitis. Your idealism means nothing here. Your Christian gospel has never scrupled the conscience of my children. You think you love them, but wait until you know them, if you can ever know them! You presume you are ready to grapple with me, understand my mysteries and change my nature. But I am easily able to overpower you with my gloom, my remoteness, my heedless brutality, my indolence, my unashamed morbidity, my total otherness! Think again, before you commit yourself to certain disillusionment! Can't you see I am no place for your wife? I am no place for your son. I am no place for you . . " Page 85


Amazement. Pride. Wonder. Role model. Exemplar. Hero. These are the words that filled my head as I read this passage. I chose this particular passage because this passage shows me how Don Richardson is a hero. Without any knowledge of the land, language, or culture, Don Richardson still agreed to go to New Guinea with his wife and son. A place where people practice cannibalism and indulge in the betrayal and slaying of other tribes, Don Richardson still volunteered to go. Neglecting the fact that he was putting his family at risk, Don Richardson chose to live with cannibals to share the Word of God. Amazing. I don't even have the courage to share the Word of God with ordinary people, let alone cannibals. Knowing that the people gaze at you as if you were meat and knowing that you had no way to communicate with them whatsoever, I think that it is suicide. However, through patience and tenacity, Don Richardson succeeded in connecting with the   Sawi tribe and eventually turned them into Christians. He even built a church with the Sawi people where they dedicate it to the glory of God. Don Richardson took a huge leap of faith and relied on God to protect him, and God did.