Please read the following paragraph from Chapter XXI of The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne (1858) and answer the following questions:
What do you think Ballantyne is trying to show in this paragraph? What does it reveal about Great Britain in the period of British Empire in which Ballantyne lived?
Life is a strange compound. Peterkin used to say of it, that it beat a druggist’s shop all to sticks; for, whereas the first is a compound of good and bad, the otheris a horrible compound of all that is utterly detestable. And indeed the more I consider it the more I am struck with the strange mixture of good and evil that exists not only in the material earth but in our own natures. In our own Coral Island we had experienced every variety of good that a bountiful Creator could heap on us. Yet on the night of the storm we had seen how almost, in our case,—and altogether, no doubt, in the case of others less fortunate—all this good might be swept away for ever. We had seen the rich fruit-trees waving in the soft air, the tender herbs shooting upwards under the benign influence of the bright sun; and, the next day, we had seen these good and beautiful trees and plants uprooted by the hurricane, crushed and hurled to the ground in destructive devastation. We had lived for many months in a clime for the most part so beautiful, that we had often wondered whether Adam and Eve had found Eden more sweet; and we had seen the quiet solitudes of our paradise suddenly broken in upon by ferocious savages, and the white sands stained with blood and strewed with lifeless forms; yet, among these cannibals, we had seen many symptoms of a kindly nature. I pondered these things much, and, while I considered them, there recurred to my memory those words which I had read in my Bible,—the works of God are wonderful, and his ways past finding out.
DUE: Next class meeting (Feb. 5)
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