Compositoin - One Language Many Voices #1 An Outpost of Progress (note)

COMPOSITION
Assimilation is important if one is to feel at home in the country where one lives. Discuss this statement with reference to An Outpost of Progress

• from the first description it is clear they are unprepared for and not prepared to adapt to this type of life.
• they themselves sense the alienation upon arrival, an alienation created not by people but by the surrounding countryside and its wildness.
• they feel threatened by it or do not comprend it, but sometimes they are oblivous to it. (sich etwas nicht bewusst sein/nicht wahrnehmen)
• they draw a line between themselves and the natives on the station.
• they claim to run the station itself whilst the savages do all the work
• their reasons for being there a only personal: a daughter's dowry to amass, a nasty job allocation due to having failed elsewhere.
• they don't use the time useful, just sitting there and waiting for the arrival of the steamer.
• they don't have any wish to have dealings with natives, even those on the station.
• they laugh at the features and physique of a visiting tribe.
• they do not know anything about hunting so they are dependend on the natives providing food for them.
• they are unable to adapt to Africa or the diet, so they find solace in alcohol.
• tension (Spannung) builds up further as a strange deal is done over slaves and tusks.
• the forced friendship breaks up and both men show their true colours: Kayerts in particular becoming very petty (engstirnig???).
• Sun: increasingly oppressive and unbearable -> their whole situation intolerable and unable to cope mentally.
• nasty accident occurs: Carlier ist shot, Kayerts takes his life.

=> Kayerts and Carlier were unable to assimilate as they were too tied to the past and unwilling to adapt to their new surroundings.