And yet through it all, she writes, “We began, though indeed ‘through a glass darkly,’ to understand what a chimpanzee really is.“Approachable” is how I would describe His Majesty King Charles III.
Although a keen and tireless observer with deep love and respect for the chimpanzees, her interaction with the apes was of necessity limited. Her account of them is not without tragedy, but her story awakens us to greater concern for them and indeed the entire natural order. The creatures Goodall describes are fascinating and magnificent. When I visit the Phoenix Zoo, I look long and intently on the orangutans, so strikingly similar to us as are the chimpanzees. I see human virtue, selfishness, sexuality, love, social hierarchies, bipedality, and nakedness all in the context of how they are similar to or different from apes.
Since reading this book, and having contemplated the great apes, I view human beings differently. Her story reads almost like a memoir, artfully crafted and richly descriptive, but at the same time full of technical observations on chimpanzee behavior. Goodall is not only a revered primatologist, but an excellent writer. There is such depth of meaning in this story that for someone who believes in such a thing as Providence, it may be difficult not to see the hand of God in it. Her work proved seminal in the field of primatology, and transformed our perception of apes and of ourselves in relation to them. The work was extremely taxing and difficult, and fruitless for over a year but through perseverance and refusal to despair, she was able to go on to observe the apes in closer detail than ever before. She had a lifelong desire and passion to observe animals, and through various conflicts and obstacles was able to begin work watching chimpanzees in their natural habitat in the Gombe forest of Kenya. Indeed, the story of Goodall’s work as a young naturalist and primatologist seems to be sanctioned by Providence.
The introduction tells of the book’s wide influence since its first publication in 1971, including the anecdote of a traveler who took this volume along with the Bible as the two books she consulted in times of perplexity and discouragement. I started reading this book on a plane to New York on April 3 rd-and then discovered that the date marked Jane Goodall’s birthday. Jane Goodall, In The Shadow of Man (Boston: Mariner Books, 2010). Second in my list of books from last year is:
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