Further on in the story our characters come across Ape-men or what Lord John Roxton refers to as missing links. A missing link is the jump from monkey to human, this made the book very interesting then as Charles Darwin had just published his theory and to see Doyle write about the missing link means he wasn’t and extreme catholic as the church said the world was made by god and Charles was proving the church wrong. He said it was made in the big bang and was millions of years old the church on the other hand said it was only a couple of thousand years old. Charles Darwin also had his theory of “the survival of the fittest” for example this means that there was once giraffes with short necks gradually the climate changed so the trees and bushes became taller. Only the giraffes with the long necks survived as they could reach the leaves and the small ones died because they couldn’t reach them. The ones with the long necks survived and multiplied, gradually all the giraffes had long necks to adapt to the environment around them.
The Indians were found later on in the book and are referred also as Accola and the Ape-men as Doda. This is what they thought while we regard the Accola as humans like us Challenger thinks of them as a sub humans or in short words and inferior race. We find that the Accola and the Doda are in a war against each other and they share or fight for the other half of the plateau. Our heroes decide to join the Accola in the war, and have more of them come over night to prepare for the great battle. They plan how they will attack them and soon the Doda start coming in sheer numbers but the British explorers and the Accola fight with a combination of arrows and rifles to chase off the Doda. Our explorers leave the Accola to decide what the want to do with the remainder of the Doda off, they arrive at the Doda camp and see the last of them being driven off the cliff. If this were now we wouldn’t do so because a whole species would be exterminated, we would bring some back and examine them and make sure there was females so they could bread again.
Doyle reinforces the English man way of thinking of the people that read this book by making a hierarchy. Challenger and Sumerlee would have been at the top of the English hierarchy so Doyle places them first, then we have the English people all together, then the Europeans then we have the white races in the world, followed by maybe Zambo or Gomez and then the Accola and last in the hierarchy the doda.
Zambo?
Challenger/Sumerlee > British people > Europeans > White people > Accola > Doda.
Gomez?
This hierarchy makes the English very proud of were they stand in the world and makes them more big headed and this is a little trick I think Doyle used to make the reader at those times more interested and to make them carry on with the reading.
The Doda are described as a “dense mob” and are “fascinated and bewildered”, “shaggy red haired creatures.” Doyle makes a contrast on page 179 by describing the Doda and the Accola; this compares them to make us have a clear picture of them. Ned describes the Accola as “little, clean limbed, red fellows” this makes page 179 very interesting because you see how Doyle makes the reader take the Accolas side instead of the Dodas. In page 190 you see how the British like to hunt and don’t really care if they exterminate a whole species, we now this because Roxton says “By George! I wish I had 50 men with rifles. Id clear out the whole infernal gang of them and leave this country a bit cleaner than we found it ”.
We don’t see this kind of behaviour in the BBC movie The Lost World. They had to make it more modern and so they cut out all the racism from the book and altered quite a few bits so that no one would get offended watching it. For example in the book we see how Edwardians treat women, they weren’t important in those days and they saw them as nagging housewife’s. We now this because of the way challenger treats his wife near the start of the book. Mrs Challenger is angry for the way the professor treated Ned, Challenger has enough and tells her she’s gone too far and light-heartedly punishes her by putting her on top of a column in the hallway! This would not happen now purely because the wife would just leave you or slap you. Also we see how the Edwardians have their views on gender because they don’t have a woman in the expedition, they mention one at the start, Gladys, Ned’s girlfriend and Mrs Challenger, that’s it throughout the whole book we don’t hear from any other women. BBC had to change it or else the female viewers would most likely get bored so they have a woman to go with them and she makes the story more exiting. The biggest difference we see between Doyle’s book and the BBC’s Lost World is the end. In the book we have Ned planning to go again with Roxton this shows the eagerness of conquering for the British. In the book the characters pretend to have faked the whole thing to protect the environment and the species that lived there. This also shows how we think differently to the Edwardians towards nature.
The last difference in the book and the film is that we have a priest in the film; he represents all the people against Darwin because he chops down the tree to have the explorers stranded in the plateau instead of Gomez.
The book The Lost World is so interesting because of all those points I have written in my essay, but there is also little things, like each chapter leaves you on a cliff hanger making you want to read on but there is also loads of suspense and many questions going through your mind when you are reading the book like will they get off the plateau? How will they get off? What will happen to the Indians? This is why Doyle had so much success with this book.
