My worthy opponents, fellow teammates and honorable judge. We are here today to prove that the environment that you live in does not effect your state of mind, rather people as a whole already have evil in them and it is a matter of time before it comes out. The Russian, who is young and always safe no matter what the situation he may be faced with, is the center of my discussion. The Russian at one point in the story could have tried to retaliate after Kurtz tried to kill him, but he did not. If the environment were to influence someone to do something that they would not have regularly done in another place the Russian would have retaliated. Another example of how the Russian used his own judgement to do what he wanted to is when he encouraged Marlow not to fire weapons at the natives but to just scare them away with the sound of the ship's whistle. Once a woman tried to climb on the ship and the Russian told Marlow that if she boarded the ship that he would have shot her because she was a mischief maker. Again this shows that he had evil thoughts but they were his choice and he would have done that at any time. He put his life on the line to save his friends many times and this shows that he has choices and that the environment does not influence what you do. The Russian may show evil intent when he goes with Kurtz to ambush some of the natives in the jungle, but he would not have gone if he did not want to. Earlier it shows that the Russian talks about killing someone and proves that he already had these evil intentions in his mind. The Russian was a follower of Kurtz from the beginning of the time he entered the book until it ended, therefore if he could follow someone like Kurtz, who hung heads around the door to his room, then he must have already had thoughts of evil in him. If not he would have stayed with Marlow who did not show many signs of evil to begin with. All of this is proof that the environment does no...