FAmily matters

With the figure of Guy, the protagonist of the story, the author wants to personificate the British colonization in Malaysia. The fact that Guy uses the love the Malay woman has for him to stop himself of feeling lonely and then leaving her alone with kids, shows the egoism of many British people living in Malaysia while M. Was a British colony and the trouble and conflicts they caused in the country. With this story the author also wants to point out the difference between both cultures and with the example of Doris, how the whites wanted to impregnate their own culture without caring and respecting the culture of local people.

The short story “An Outpost of Progress” criticizes the colonialism in different ways.

The main goal of the story is to depict the absurdity of the benefits of progress by colonization, using a distant omniscient narrator and a very notable irony.

The ridiculous and pathetic appearance of the main characters Carlier and Kayerts, shows the arrogance and stupidity of the white European men who set out to make themselves rich by trying to spread commerce and civilization to Africa. Both of them should represent progress, but they do not, so the author uses they figure to point out that colonialism in Africa did not do any sense at all, because white people were ill-educated comparing them to the native Makola, who had a well-ordered and prospering family, spoke English and French and did everything in the trading post station.