Sacrifice In King Leopold

653 Words3 Pages

1. Main Themes This document successfully conveyed various topics but I will only discuss a few. The first main theme is people will do anything no matter the sacrifice. A sacrifice is destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else. In many ways, Leopold sacrificed people for his own personal reasons. In the documentary, King Leopold had the power to use people for his personal gain and enrichment. Leopold gained his riches through the rise of prices for rubber by forcing labors from Africa to harvest and process the rubber. He simply ignored their working conditions of the men, women and children and eventually these individuals died or were killed. But nevertheless, these “sacrifices” earned Leopold huge profits. Another topic that was considered is Dark things will eventually come to the light. In the video, many people saw Stanley as the king’s helper, a person who the people really needed. He was seen as the person who would help the colony thrive with King Leopold. Stanley is responsible for making the Conga a place that is “Fit for a king.” Stanley has the reputation of being this great builder, peacemaker, and constructor but in reality, he was destroying something that was well existing. King Leopold along with Stanley was both able to deceive the world of their wrong doings until after …show more content…

All good works aren’t good works simply means just because you do something and you think it was or is a good choice doesn’t mean it was a good choice or even beneficial at all. In this situation with Leopold, he says he wanted to make his dreams come true by opening the African continent to commerce, to Christianize the Africans, and to promote progress. Throughout this document, King Leopold’s actions contradicted his dreams. He enforced fear, terror, the greed for profit, and he made life hard for the Africans. His dreams were literally a living nightmare for the