Ken’s Reviews > Dreaming Jungles > Status Update

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.