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Cliff Notes for Michael Crichton's "Congo"?

johnjohn320

Diamond Member
Yes, our school system has regressed so far as to assign this book for reading in my American Lit class. Not everyone is reading it, but it was on a list. Anyway, I have absolutely no time to read it. There are no spark notes for it that I can find. Anyone have any help here?

And for those of you who are going to say "just read the book, slacker"--thanks. I'll take it into consideration when I have the time to do anything again. In the meantime...cliff notes?
 
Guy searching for a meaning to his humdrum life joins the Southern Front Liberation Army. They go on a mission in the Congo. They get lost. They encounter snakes/spiders/dead people. Guy gets trapped in Pungi Stick pit. Eats his own foot to stay alive. Guy is rescued by Black Ops US Army unit.

Next time, read the book. You're welcome.
 
Originally posted by: MichaelD
Guy searching for a meaning to his humdrum life joins the Southern Front Liberation Army. They go on a mission in the Congo. They get lost. They encounter snakes/spiders/dead people. Guy gets trapped in Pungi Stick pit. Eats his own foot to stay alive. Guy is rescued by Black Ops US Army unit.

Next time, read the book. You're welcome.
wtf are you talking about?

Monkey learns sign language. Monkeys goes to Africa to get in tune with nature. Monkey finds lost zity of Zinj. Lots of people die in the process.

 
Originally posted by: Mwilding
Originally posted by: MichaelD
Guy searching for a meaning to his humdrum life joins the Southern Front Liberation Army. They go on a mission in the Congo. They get lost. They encounter snakes/spiders/dead people. Guy gets trapped in Pungi Stick pit. Eats his own foot to stay alive. Guy is rescued by Black Ops US Army unit.

Next time, read the book. You're welcome.
wtf are you talking about?

Monkey learns sign language. Monkeys goes to Africa to get in tune with nature. Monkey finds lost zity of Zinj. Lots of people die in the process.


You're right, that's Chrichton's other jungle-book, MONGO.
 
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

Cliffs notes are only for books that suck and are boring. Classics, schmassics. Crichton writes entertaining books.
 
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

You don't have to tell me that. But regardless, I need to have this thing done by Wednesday, and I just don't have the time.
 
Originally posted by: dparker
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

You don't have to tell me that. But regardless, I need to have this thing done by Wednesday, and I just don't have the time.

Go rent the movie. Are you in HS?

Yeah, I'm in HS...but I've been told that the movie is different enough from the book that I could trip some things up.
 
Haha, Cliff Notes for a Chrichton book. Yeah, right.

Go rent the movie and make a complete ass of yourself in class. The only things the movie has in common with the book is that in both there are apes and they both have something to do with a jungle.
 
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

You don't have to tell me that. But regardless, I need to have this thing done by Wednesday, and I just don't have the time.

Give me a break. It shouldn't take more than five or six hours to read a Michael Crichton book. I fired off Jurrasic Park in four hours it was so good.
 
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: dparker
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

You don't have to tell me that. But regardless, I need to have this thing done by Wednesday, and I just don't have the time.

Go rent the movie. Are you in HS?

Yeah, I'm in HS...but I've been told that the movie is different enough from the book that I could trip some things up.

Ask some people and see what differences there are, and also as bad as it sounds do go into extreme detail unless you know for sure it is in the book. My teachers weren't the brightest things and so long as the paper was done then it didn't really matter. Also, if it was on a list you may want to find a book that has cliff notes. Personally I would go with Congo just because it sounds easy, but whatever.
 
How long is Congo? Just read before you go to bed. It probably took me a total of about 8 or 9 hours to read through Jurrasic Park, over the period of 2 or 3 days.
 
Originally posted by: brigden
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: Shantanu
Cliffs Notes are for classics. Congo is crap.

You don't have to tell me that. But regardless, I need to have this thing done by Wednesday, and I just don't have the time.

Give me a break. It shouldn't take more than five or six hours to read a Michael Crichton book. I fired off Jurrasic Park in four hours it was so good.

Yeah, no kidding. Jurassic Park is only about 400 pages, and Congo is a little over 300 pages (at least my copy is). It isn't that long.
 
I thought Congo was actually a pretty good book. A quick read also. However, every other Chrichton book I read I enjoyed more. (Jurassic Park I & II, Sphere, and TimeLine.
 
Originally posted by: austin316
I thought Congo was actually a pretty good book. A quick read also. However, every other Chrichton book I read I enjoyed more. (Jurassic Park I & II, Sphere, and TimeLine.


I thought it was a good book as well, took me about 3 days to get through it back in high school... its very hard to put down any of his book, kept leading one chapter to the next until youve realized you have burned through 250 pages.
 
Just suck it up and read it because there ARE some significant differences from the movie (although I can't remember what they are off the top of my head.) I agree with the others who said it was a HORRIBLE book by Crichton's standards. I made myself finish it, but was throughly disappointed with it. Jurassic Park and Sphere were MUCH MUCH better IMO although the movie version of Sphere was just as bad as Congo.

One other option I don't think I saw listed was looking for an audio book-on-tape or book-on-CD at your local library. These will be abridged versions, but at least they'll be based strictly off the book unlike the movie which takes some liberties with the storyline (and only made a bad story worse.) My dad listens to audio books all the time since he travels in his car all the time.

It's pretty sad that THIS of all the contemporary books is on the reading list. Is this supposed to serve as a comparison with another classic like 'Out of Africa' or something?
 
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