Respect is often touted as the most important part of etiquette in any situation. According to Confucius, “Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?” What Confucius was trying to say is that when men do not respect each other and practice tolerance, they become much like beasts, wild creatures with little or no conscience or feeling. Two works that embody the idea presented in this quote are Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Atlantis Gene by A.G. Riddle. These novels demonstrate highly relevant examples of how respect is the most important quality that distinguish men from unfeeling beasts. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the white Christian missionaries from England have very little respect …show more content…
Riddle, the author shows how groups of people can devastate other groups with a lack of respect. An organization known as the Immari has a plan to wipe out most of the human race using a plan known as the Toba Protocol, which has roots in human evolutionary theory. The reason they want to do this is to find a group of people that they believe are superior and that have immunity to the plague. The plague will weed out all the people who are not superior. They lack respect for most people on the Earth and will go to extreme lengths to obtain their idea of a perfect human race, becoming beast-like and losing their own human qualities in the process. Flashback is one literary element used in the novel. Dr. Kate Warner, the geneticist and autism researcher who would later help lead the fight against the Immari, recalls her tough situation when growing up in Germany and the bad things that happened to her in San Francisco. She has dealt with these beast-like forces of people before. Foreshadowing is also used when the characters describe the Toba Protocol. They describe it in a very cautious manner, as if it is about to happen, in order to offset the “beasts” of the Immari, who don’t want people to believe that it could happen. Overall, The Atlantis Gene is a good representation of how men (and women) can turn into beasts without respect for lesser