Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Mad White Giant Ate His Dog Allen - 1,016 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

A walk in the crocodiles shoes Explorers who make a living by writing about their expeditions know that it takes two journeys to make a book: the physical slog is followed by its recreation in literary form. And the second can be even more perilous than the first. Benedict Allen wasnt quite as green as the rainforest when he decided, at 22, to beat a path alone from the Orinoco to the Amazon. After all, hed got BSc in environmental science, and a doctorate in self-possession. But by the time the flora and fauna and the ethnic tribes were through with him, he also had dysentery and malaria, and depression and doubt in double doses. But it was the tribe he wanted to join back home that gave him the toughest time of all.

Too big for his jungle boots, huffed worthies at the Royal Geographical Society, at 1 Kensington Gore, SW 7. Maybe they didnt like the first whiff of young Allen they got from a tale in a tabloid paper of how, starving, he ate his dog kidneys and liver first. Or perhaps it was that the title of his book Mad White Giant was gung-ho, when it should have been more respectful of the Victorian tradition of exploring that they assumed was his model. It didnt occur to some of the pith-heads at the RGS that Allen might have been mocking himself there is over two gang yards of him; and his clumsiness through the trip-root, creeper-noted foliage made him the despair of his shoeless guides, who were fleeter than people wearing Air Jordans. I appeared from nowhere, having done this big journey as someone nobody really knew, he reflects, almost 20 years on, in his eye in Shepherds Bush.

I had been in the Daily Mail as the man who ate his dog to survive. They didnt like the whole Indiana Jones element, I was an adventurer; an upstart. But its the unfairness with which they judged, and prejudged, that hurt. There was a spat about authenticity with Dr James Hemming, director of the RGS, whose portals he didnt darken for a while but one of whose pillars he has now become. I was seething, he says. So much so that his mother feared he would stomp off on a dangerously challenging trip, just to prove his critics wrong.

Even now, with a cache of books and TV series chronicling his lone adventuring, from voodoo in Haiti to crocodile cults in New Guinea, it rankles with Allen to be reminded that some didnt believe he had covered so much terrain so quickly by foot and by canoe. So much so that the authors note in the first edition (1985) that says I have been at pains to omit more than fleeting anthropological, ecological and geographical references is supplemented in the new paperback with a warning to pedantic readers that if cultural and geographical blunders scream out at you, remember this was a young guy launching out into an exotic world which he didnt, and couldnt understand. Allen says that, even on that trip, he realised that what would be required back home, if he was to be accepted by the experts, would be a careful, detailed record of such a fiendishly long trek. He admits now that he was naive; that he was messed up by the hardships. But he wasnt the romantic soul some made him out to be. From the first, he set a goal for his exploration; and scrupulously made notes (and comic doodles), but some on that venture were lost when his canoe was capsized by the dog which became several dinners.

Early on, too, he began to build the idea of a different kind of adventuring: It was a bit naive, but I thought that if the locals dont need money, and I could lock into their system, I wouldnt be held back by the problems of trying to keep in contact with the outside world. Id also be free from the mental baggage. All &# 91; my&# 93; expeditions became a bid to leave as much of the west behind as possible. Unlike other equipment-laden explorers, he, a solo voyager, had the chance to glimpse obscure cults and customs. To me, its a question of going back to people whove been bypassed and entering their world. In New Guinea, he says he sought out members of a tribal crocodile cult who eventually permitted him to take part in their initiation rites &# 91; described in Into the Crocodiles Nest &# 93; .

In spite of contact with the outside world, the tribe keeps up the ceremony, but now it usefulness to them is as a map of the mind. Its how they use the crocodile as a role model in the forest. Each remote little community, he says, offers a little window in how to see and interpret life; and I am trying to get through that window. But hed stumbled on something else, too, although he didnt realise it till he began writing Mad White Giant back home a new subgenre of travel writing.

Bruce Chain had discovered (or rediscovered) it, by adding an imaginative component to his journeys; but Allen says his tales from the tangled woods are to be read as poetic accounts of what happened to him. Theres a lot of personal information in that first book. Now, pretty well all the great physical journeys have been done by someone or other. But Allen is still outward-bound, and less than half as old as Wilfred Thesiger. Now is an era of idea, he says, so though his next book will be about the Amazon, it wont be a conventional account of it as an eco-system, a green hell, or a paradise, but as a fabulous river of the imagination.

Id like to work out what it really is: maybe its an unanswerable question; maybe its a little bit of everyone. &# 183; The author will be reading at the Royal Geographic Society on February 18. Call 020 - 7591 3100 for details.


Free research essays on topics related to: trip, back home, crocodile, allen, geographical

Research essay sample on Mad White Giant Ate His Dog Allen

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com