Choose a representative passage from this novel that holds particular significance to you. Type it in and comment on its significance.

One section in particular that tipped my interest was in Chapter 8 page 102. It goes as follows:

If I had not been there that day to trigger that salute as an emissary of Christ, someone else’s emissary would have trigger it later, possibly with quite different motives and results. Thos who advocate the world’s remaining tribal groups should be left to themselves do not realize how naïve their notion is! The world just isn’t big enough anymore for anyone to be left alone! It is a foregone conclusion that even if missionaries do not go in to give, lumbermen, crocodile hunters, prospectors, or farmers will still go in to take! The issue is not then should anyone go in, because obviously someone will! The issue is rather, will the most sympathetic person get there first?
As the one who go there first to live among the Sawi, it was my aim to combine faithfulness to God and the Scriptures with respect for the Sawi and their culture. The crucial question was, would the Sawi culture and the Scriptures prove so opposite in their basic premises as to render this two-way loyalty impossible? I intended to find out.
But first I had to build my home.

From my book, this is how I marked up this section.

If I had not been there that day to trigger that salute as an emissary of Christ, someone else’s emissary would have trigger it later, possibly with quite different motives and results. Those who advocate the world’s remaining tribal groups should be left to themselves do not realize how naïve their notion is! The world just isn’t big enough anymore for anyone to be left alone! It is a foregone conclusion that even if missionaries do not go in to give, lumbermen, crocodile hunters, prospectors, or farmers will still go in to take! The issue is not then should anyone go in, because obviously someone will! The issue is rather, will the most sympathetic person get there first?
As the one who go there first to live among the Sawi, it was my aim to combine faithfulness to God and the Scriptures with respect for the Sawi and their culture. The crucial question was, would the Sawi culture and the Scriptures prove so opposite in their basic premises as to render this two-way loyalty impossible? I intended to find out.
But first I had to build my home.

This is a section that addresses those who say it is wrong to infiltrate a society/culture such as the Sawi. I have often weighed the pros and cons of ‘helping’ a society/culture by means of going there and giving to them what we think they need. What I have often wondered is is it better for us to ‘help’ them by giving them these things that we say the need, but they really don’t, or is it more beneficial to just leave them as they are. This passage grasped my attention that it addressed both perspectives and provided evidence as to why we need to provide the best ‘help’ that we can.