53 pages • 1 hour read
Jane Goodall, Douglas AbramsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses animal abuse, genocide, rape, and child soldiers.
As Doug and Jane speak, they slowly define the parameters of hope. Jane sees hope as a key aspect of human nature and survival. She thinks that people need hope to live and that a key aspect of having hope is taking action to see hope through to fruition. Doug agrees with her anecdotal thoughts about hope based on his own preferred mode of analysis, which is research.
Jane is careful to account for people whose current circumstances might not allow them to take immediate action for causes like combatting climate change. She elaborates by discussing “a group of conservationists who have been tried and given long sentences for putting up camera traps to record the presence of wildlife” (9). This group cannot currently take action to fight climate change, but Jane says that hope can still exist in such circumstances.
When hope survives, even in situations where people cannot take immediate action, it is powerful enough to keep people alive in dire circumstances. Doug tells a story about Dr. Edith Eger, a Hungarian psychologist who was interned in the Auschwitz death camp at age 16. Eger met another young girl who continued to live and work despite being very sick, because she had hope that they’d “be liberated by Christmas” (35). Christmas came and went without liberation, and she died the next day. Eger determined “that hope kept the girl alive and that when she lost hope, she lost her will to live” (35). This story demonstrates how hope can serve as a life force.
Jane details dozens of stories of people who have undergone intense trauma. Jane ties together her discussion about the nature and power of hope with the theme of The Significance of Youth Activism and Education. She discusses nine people who survived the genocide in Burundi: “four ex-child soldiers and five women who’d been raped” (139). Despite this trauma, “these young Burundians wanted to help others recover from their own traumas and show them that there was a way forward” (139). In other words, they wanted to give other people hope. They started a chapter of Roots and Shoots to provide both personal hope and hope in a better planetary future to those around them. They take action to maintain and spread hope, which Jane identifies as a key factor in hope.
Doug concludes from these stories that “resilience is linked to the belief that we can make a difference in our lives and the lives of others […] hope really gives us the will to not only heal ourselves but to make the world a better place” (166). In the examples Jane gives, some of the people who have suffered the most want to make a difference in the lives of others. In doing so, Doug concludes this might “heal ourselves” while also helping the planet at large.
Through the book, Jane and Doug brainstorm and debate about the best way to get people to take collective action to combat unprecedented biodiversity loss and climate change. One of the key ideas Jane wants to educate people about is the interrelation of plant and animal species. She thinks that if people were truly aware of how interconnected and interdependent global processes, environments, and ecosystems were, more people would take action to protect the planet.
Jane’s first mission as a naturalist was to observe chimpanzee behavior. Her mentor, Louis Leakey, “believed that an understanding of how our closest relatives behaved in the wild might shed light on human evolution” (14). Leakey saw the interconnection between humans and chimps that many scientists before him did not see, instead seeing humans as superior to chimps. Leakey thought about the interrelation between humans and chimps via their “common ancestor” (14). Jane did not approach the chimps with scientific remove, but from a place of humble, personal connection. This early mission of Jane’s—to find out our common behavior with chimps—thus symbolizes something much greater about her worldview.
Jane sees all living things on the planet as interconnected. When she learns about chimpanzees being caught for lab experiments and investigates this, she learns about “the problems facing human populations living in and around chimpanzee forests” (23). Helping chimps was not an isolated problem; Jane realized they were endangered because of the disenfranchisement of the humans living near them. She begins to address problems holistically, understanding the interconnection between entities, finding the root causes and working to alleviate them.
Jane wants people to think of life as a “tapestry.” Her educational lectures try to get people to “understand how much we humans depend on the natural world for food, air, water, clothing—everything” (96). Though humans have invented many processes to dispense food, goods, and fuel across the globe, those items only exist because of various natural resources that make their ingredients or the process to building them possible.
When humans do not understand how “every species has a role to play, how everything is interconnected” (96), their actions might lead to careless disregard of certain species. If even one species goes extinct, Jane says it is like “a hole is torn in that wonderful tapestry of life” (96). Ecosystems can be thrown into chaos with a single change in biodiversity or population numbers. Jane’s primary example is how Yellowstone’s grey wolf was hunted to near-extinction, which threw the entire ecosystem into chaos: not only animal populations, but also nearby human industries and water sources were affected.
Jane uses education to reveal to people the extent of this fragile interconnection. If they were aware of it, it might spark a renewed desire to take action toward helping the earth, spurring on greater hope for the future.
Jane is aware that her “next great adventure” (215) will likely be death, as she is almost 90 years old. She is at peace with this and knows that climate solutions will not happen in her lifetime. As such, she is invested in providing support, resources, and education to younger generations, who will be the primary global actors in the coming decades.
Part of this drive to nurture youth activism and education comes from the fact that Jane herself benefitted from mentorship. Louis Leakey was vital in helping Jane develop confidence in her own abilities as a naturalist. Jane says she “could hardly believe” that Leakey chose her to observe chimps in those early days (15). When she became hopeless, he would assure her, “I know you can [do it]” (18). Jane thus tries to offer mentorship to others in need. Jane tells Doug about a pen pal she had: a 14-year-old girl in a detention center with no familial support. The center had a copy of Jane’s book; the girl read the book and adopted Jane as a maternal figure. She then “started behaving well, working hard—she turned her life around” (137). This is why Jane thinks it is so important to actively engage with youths, providing them with resources and support.
It is important that youth be able to bounce back from trauma for two reasons. One, they experience more acute “eco-grief” as they see the world changing due to climate change. Jane says older generations have “stolen” the future from younger generations. Jane notices the hopelessness in youth and wants to provide them with “the hopeful philosophy of ‘everyone can make a difference’” (114). This led to her youth program, Roots and Shoots. The second reason is because the trajectory of the future is in the hands of today’s youth. Jane dislikes people who displace all responsibility for “solving” the climate crisis onto youths. She wants to do her fair share to solve the problems she sees, but she is realistic about the fact that she will not be around much longer, in comparison to the youths she interacts with.
One of Roots and Shoots’ big victories is that three generations of youths Jane that has helped educate and empower have grown up and “taken the values they acquired as members into their adult lives” (131) and applied them to various careers. People like these are case studies of why youth education is so vital to the future of activism and the fight for a healthier planet.
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