by H. G. Wells
Summary:
Characters
Evans and Hooker: two friends who make an adventurous
journey to a Tropical island for hunting treasures.
Chang-hi: a Chinese man who has a map of the
treasures.
Two other Chinese men: Chang-hi’s co-worker
“The Treasure in the Forest” is
an ominous adventure story in which two men search for Spanish treasure,
letting greed get the better of their awareness. As the story moves ahead to
show how power and greed corrupt human beings.
The fundamental message of The
Treasure in the Forest is to not take risks when we are unprepared. The two
Englishmen took risks in an unfamiliar wilderness and were killed soon. This
story was about two Englishmen who heard about gold on an island and obtained a
map from a Chinese. So they paddled a canoe to the island, having fallen asleep
aboard the boat. They drove their boat into a lagoon and up a
river in the forest, following the chart and successfully arriving at their
destination. When they discovered the death of the Chinese they had spoken
with, they were terrified and began to worry about their safety, but nothing
occurred. They were packing the gold when Evans received a puncture from the
gold. Evans tried to forget about it, but the deadly puncture caused him to die
for a short time. Evans urged the other man, Hooker, to discard the bad gold.
Hooker, on the other hand, was afraid and didn’t even understand what his
friend told him, and Hooker accidentally touched the gold. Finally, both of the
men died.
This storey succeeds in depicting
the dreadful scenario when they confronted the danger, and the outcome of
taking the risk will draw attention to others.
Exercise
Understanding
the text
Answer the following
questions.
a. Describe the expository
scene of the story.
Answer: The story
opens with the canoe approaching the land, by two treasure hunters, Evans and
Hooker, a little river flowing to the sea, the thicker and deeper green forest,
sloppy hill, and the sea.
b. What does the map look like
and how do Evan and Hooker interpret it?
Answer: The map looks
like a rough map, creased and worn to the pitch of separation. Evan interprets
twisting lines in the map as the river and the star as the place and Hooker
interprets the dotted line and straight line and the way to the lagoon in the
map.
c. How did Evan and Hooker
know about the treasure?
Answer: Evan and
Hooker knew about the treasure by the conversation of the Chinese man and the
map he has.
d. Describe Evan’s dream.
Answer: Evan had a
dream about the treasure and Chang-hi. In the dream, they were in the forest
and saw a little fire where three Chinamen sat around it and talked in quiet
voices in English. Evans went closer and he knew that Chang-hi took the gold
from a Spanish galleon after shipwrecked and hid it carefully on the island. He
worked alone and it was his secret, but now he wanted help to get the gold
back. There was a battle and Chang-hi was brutally killed by them.
e. What do the two treasure
hunters see when they walk towards the island?
Answer: The two
treasure hunters see three palm trees in line with a clump of bushes at the
mouth of the stream when they walk towards the island.
f. In what condition did the
treasure hunters find the dead man?
Answer: The treasure
hunters found the dead man lying in a clear space among the trees with a puffed
and purple neck and swollen hands and ankles.
g. How did the treasure
hunters try to carry gold ingots to the canoe?
Answer: The treasure
hunters tried to carry gold ingots to the canoe with the help of the Coat of
which one end of the collar catching by the hand of Hooker and the other collar
by Evan.
h. How were Evan and Hooker
poisoned?
Answer: Evan and
Hooker were poisoned as a slender (thin) thorn nearly of two inches length
pricked in Hooker’s thumb and Evan rolled over him and both of them crumpled
together on the ground which made them suffered a lot.
Reference to
the Context
a. How do you know the story
is set on a tropical island?
Answer: The story “The
Treasures in the Forest” has been set on a tropical island. It begins with two
men, Evans and Hooker, heading in a canoe towards a coral island in the heat of
the noon sun, after having paddled all night from the mainland.
Here, Tropical islands are known
to have uniquely naturally variable ecosystems, including tropical rainforests,
open woodlands and grass savannahs, freshwater lakes and streams, salt marshes
and mudflats (wetland), mangrove and coastal forests, sefis, fringing and
offshore coral reefs, and deep sea.
As we go through the story, it
opens with a canoe approaching land, and the setting of the bay, the white surf
of the reef, the litter river, running to the sea, the virgin forest, sloppy
hill, and so on. Its atmosphere, ecosystems, thicker and green forest,
freshwater stream coastal forest, palm trees, thorny bushes, seagrass and depth
sea illustrate the reader to know that the story is set on a tropical island.
b. Why do you think Evan and
Hooker took such a risk of finding the buried treasure on a desert island?
Answer: I think Evan
and Hooker took such a risk of finding the buried treasure on a desert island
because of the following reasons:
Treasure Hunts help people
develop new skills and strengthen and reinforce other skills such as
leadership, communication, and problem-solving.
This is of equal benefit to
employees and employers combined.
lt develops the ability to tackle
any difficult circumstances.
They think of risks as
rewarding.
It is said that “Gold makes
people crazy” to do something new.
It also reveals their greed for
wealth.
c. Do you think the narrator
of the story is racist? If yes, what made him feel superior to other races?
Answer: Yes, I find
some sort of racist feelings in the narrator of the story when he presents.
Evan and Hooker as superior to that of the Chinese man in the story. In fact, a
racist is a person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards people
based on their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one
that is a minority or marginalized. In the story, we find the Chinese man was
brutally killed by Evans and Hooker. When Hooker said to Evans, "Have you
lost your wit?", It also reflects dominating nature of Hooker over Ivan.
Thus, many instances in the story state that the narrator of the story looks
like a racist.
d. What do you think is the
moral of the story?
Answer: "The more
they desire for greed and power, the more they become selfish" is the
moral of the story "The Treasure in the Forest". Evans and Hooker's
greed increase as they come to know about the treasures. They murdered the
Chinese man Chiang-hi brutally and they went in search of treasures with the
help of the map.
It is Greed that is the
disordered desire for more than is decent, not for the greater good but one's
own selfish interest, and at the detriment of others and society at large.
Greed can be for anything but is most commonly for money or treasures and power
is much more dangerous and it can lead to someone’s death as well which we find
in the story.
Reference
beyond the text
a. Interpret the story as a
mystery story.
Answer: H.G. Wells’
“The Treasures in the Forest” is a mystery story involving two wastrels
(neglected situation), the dead body of a Chinese man and thorns that draw
blood in Hooker’s thumb. It carries many suspenseful instances such as:
The story is about two treasure
hunters, Evans and Hooker who seek to find the hidden treasures in the forest. Hooker
murder Chang-hi, a Chinese man to steal the treasure map. Chang-hi grins at
them when he gets murdered. They travel by canoe sailing towards the coral
island. However, neither of them understands the intention behind it. They
follow the map and soon discover a forest, then a pile of stones just like the
map. But then they find a man corpse of the Chinese man. As soon as they see
the gold Evans starts to pick them up back in the canoe, however, both of them
suffer a lot. Hooker then realizes the true meaning behind the grin of
Chang-hi. Thus, it is a mystery story.
b. Treasure hunting is a
favorable subject of children’s story. Remember a treasure hunting story you
read in your childhood and compare and contrast it with 'The Treasure in the
Forest.'
Answer: I have read a
treasure hunting story named "The Gold Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe. Both
“The Treasures in the Forest” and "The Gold Bug" are suspense
stories. In “The Gold Bug", William Legrand goes on treasure hunting on a
remote island in South Carolina while in "The Treasure in the
Forest", Evans and Hooker head to an unnamed tropical island in search of
treasures.
The narrator in both of the
stories is unnamed. The island is found marshy with thick myrtle shrubs etc. in
both of the stories. The characters estimate the total value of the treasure at
about one and a half million dollars in The Gold Bug but in The Treasures in
the Forest, they carry treasures in a canoe. The pet dog is used in The Gold
Bug and the map is used in The Treasures in the Forest. The Gold Bug deals with
the themes like wealth and fortune and The Treasures in the Forest projects the
themes like greed and power.
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