humanity values

Class warfare is at issue in the story. A white man—almost certainly working in tandem with a white woman—kills another white man: the husband of the woman. This is not a case of Europeans getting away with killing a native; this is a case of Europeans getting away with killing one of their own. Were the situation somewhat different, however—the Chinaman turns out to have killed the white man or one of the other dark-skinned natives—the question is immediately apparent. Would the maddeningly lackadaisical police chief have been so quick to just let the matter go because the killer was “pleasant.” One has to doubt it very seriously. In the mind of the investigator, the two wealthy, white, European pleasant people are guilty beyond a doubt. But he still doesn’t consider it worth pursuing. Even with class warfare is not a direct issue in the narrative of colonialist literature, it is an omnipresent theme.