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Yali’s question Symbol Analysis |
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Since Guns, Germs, and Steel is a work of historical nonfiction, it doesn’t have many symbols. Still, Diamond writes in a conversational style, often using specific events from his life as jumping-off points to talk about weighty scientific ideas. At the beginning of the novel, Diamond describes meeting a charismatic New Guinean politician named Yali, who asked him, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo … but we black people had little cargo of our own?” Yali’s question arguably symbolizes the basic problem that Diamond’s book tries to solve: how certain societies, particularly Western, European societies, came to be so technologically and economically powerful while other societies did not.