Gerald Durrell Character Analysis

It was towards the end of the second year that I decided, the Zoo [...] must [...] start to contribute something towards the conservation of wildlife. I felt that it would be essential to gradually weed out all the commoner animals in the collection and to replace them with rare and threatened species.

[N]ewly emergent governments are generally far too busy proving themselves to the world for the first few years to worry much about the fate of the wild-life of their country, and history has proved, time and time again, how rapidly a species can be exterminated, even a numerous one.

‘I shall get the money from other sources,’ I said austerely. ‘Don’t you realize that this island is infested with rich people who do nothing all day long but revolve from one cocktail party to another, like a set of Japanese waltzing mice.’

‘After all, if breeding colonies of things like gorillas aren’t established in captivity soon, there won’t be any left at all. Surely these people realize this?’

‘I’m afraid they don’t,’ said Hope. ‘I realize it and you realize it, but I’m afraid the average person either doesn’t or couldn’t care less.’

Having previously suffered by keeping [a] chimpanzee in the house, I knew from bitter experience that there was nothing like an ape for turning a civilized room into [...] a bomb site in an incredibly short space of time [...]

N’Pongo, of course, did not leave the guest-room in the condition that he found it, but this was only to be expected. Although his manners were exemplary, he was only a baby [...]

Nandy’s eyes were large and lustrous, and when she looked sideways, she showed the whites of them; but they were frightened eyes [...]. They were the eyes of an animal that had had little experience of human beings, but even that limited experience had given her no reason to trust or respect them.

She had such a woebegone, frightened face that one longed to be able to pick her up and comfort her, but she had been too deeply hurt, and this was the last thing she would have appreciated.

They were working out their own protocol: [...] It had the childishness of a General Election but was three times as interesting. However, by that evening, Nandy had achieved what amounted to Votes for Female Gorillas, and both she and N’Pongo shared the wooden shelf.

Although they were so different in character, they quite plainly adored one another. N’Pongo was the great giggling clown of the pair, while Nandy was much quieter, more introspective and watchful.

As with all apes, he lost weight with horrifying rapidity.[...] Almost as you watched, his face seemed to shrink and shrivel and his powerful body grow gaunt. What had once been a proudly rotund paunch now became a ghastly declivity where his ribs forked.

It was towards the end of the second year that I decided, the Zoo [...] must [...] start to contribute something towards the conservation of wildlife. I felt that it would be essential to gradually weed out all the commoner animals in the collection and to replace them with rare and threatened species.

[N]ewly emergent governments are generally far too busy proving themselves to the world for the first few years to worry much about the fate of the wild-life of their country, and history has proved, time and time again, how rapidly a species can be exterminated, even a numerous one.

‘I shall get the money from other sources,’ I said austerely. ‘Don’t you realize that this island is infested with rich people who do nothing all day long but revolve from one cocktail party to another, like a set of Japanese waltzing mice.’

‘After all, if breeding colonies of things like gorillas aren’t established in captivity soon, there won’t be any left at all. Surely these people realize this?’

‘I’m afraid they don’t,’ said Hope. ‘I realize it and you realize it, but I’m afraid the average person either doesn’t or couldn’t care less.’

Having previously suffered by keeping [a] chimpanzee in the house, I knew from bitter experience that there was nothing like an ape for turning a civilized room into [...] a bomb site in an incredibly short space of time [...]

N’Pongo, of course, did not leave the guest-room in the condition that he found it, but this was only to be expected. Although his manners were exemplary, he was only a baby [...]

Nandy’s eyes were large and lustrous, and when she looked sideways, she showed the whites of them; but they were frightened eyes [...]. They were the eyes of an animal that had had little experience of human beings, but even that limited experience had given her no reason to trust or respect them.

She had such a woebegone, frightened face that one longed to be able to pick her up and comfort her, but she had been too deeply hurt, and this was the last thing she would have appreciated.

They were working out their own protocol: [...] It had the childishness of a General Election but was three times as interesting. However, by that evening, Nandy had achieved what amounted to Votes for Female Gorillas, and both she and N’Pongo shared the wooden shelf.

Although they were so different in character, they quite plainly adored one another. N’Pongo was the great giggling clown of the pair, while Nandy was much quieter, more introspective and watchful.

As with all apes, he lost weight with horrifying rapidity.[...] Almost as you watched, his face seemed to shrink and shrivel and his powerful body grow gaunt. What had once been a proudly rotund paunch now became a ghastly declivity where his ribs forked.