The Wood That Weeps

Chapter 10

The chapter begins by describing Stanley's marriage to Dorothy Tennant and his psychological struggles with women and intimacy. Hochschild notes how there is sometimes "psychological fuel" behind imperial expansion and says that explorers are many times troubled men in flight of some part of themselves. Stanley flees from intimacy, and Leopold also has put all of his efforts into the Congo as a distraction from his troubles with his family and his gradual loss of power to the elected government in his country.

The story then shifts to black Reverend William Sheppard, who is sent to Africa with white Reverend Samuel Lapsley to build a Southern Presbyterian mission near the Kasai River as part of the American Back to Africa movement. Sheppard and Lapsley encounter Joseph Conrad soon after their arrival in the Congo. Lapsley speaks very highly of Sheppard, and Sheppard acts as the leader, a twist to the supposed roles of whites and blacks in Western society. Lapsley takes trip away from the mission and dies of disease. More whites are sent to take over the mission because they Presbyterians are embarassed to have a black man in control. Nevertheless, when they arrive, they find that Sheppard is very well suited to his environment. His knowledge, personality, and attempts to speak the native language are appreciated by whites and blacks alike.

Sheppard learns to speak the Bakuba language. He is the first foreigner to reach Ifuca, the capital of the Kuba kingdom. The king used threats to keep foreigners from finding his kingdom and planned on beheading any intruders. But since Sheppard was black and partly spoke the native language, the king accepted him as the reincarnation of Bope Mekabe, who was once a king of the Bakuba. Sheppard explores the Kuba culture with a curious and friendly tone unseen by the writings of previous explorers. The Kuba kingdom appears to an extremely civilized kingdom with wonderful art and a possible court system, but Hochschild then states that the Kuba capital will be looted by Leopold eight years later.

We find that the rush for rubber is the facilitator of the looting. When Dunlop tires is founded, a large rubber economy develops. The Congo holds many wild rubber plants. Hochschild notes that Leopold acts like the CEO of a company when he discovers the vast amounts of rubber his lands in the Congo hold. A quota system developed that causes hostages held to force labor, severed hands of those who rebel, and the destroying of many rubber plants to quickly meet quotas. Leopold wants to get the most rubber he can from the wild plants before rubber plantations elsewhere begin to mature.

The French word for rubber, caoutchouc, comes from the meaning "the wood that weeps." This is the physical description of the rubber, which oozes from the trees, but Hochschild's inclusion of the fact has a double meaning for the despair the rubber boom causes. The Congo soon becomes synonymous with severed hands. At the end of the chapter, Hochschild states how the myth about black cannibalism has reversed: blacks now think that the cans of corned beef at whites' houses are made from chopped human hands.

This cartoon, shown in the pictures before page 121 in the book, shows Congo is wrapped and destroyed by the rubber coils of the greed in the rubber boom:

Punch, 1906.



Quiz Questions

1. What is the significance of the title?
2. How does Lapsley treat Sheppard differently than the norm and how is this treatment similar to or different from whites leaving behind their bourgeois mentality as mentioned earlier in the novel?
3. Why is the juxtaposition of Sheppard's efforts and the rubber boom significant?
4. How was Sheppard able to be accepted the people and king of the Bakuba kingdom?
5. Why did Leopold want to harvest rubber so quickly and what types of problems and atrocities did his quotas lead to?