Endurance, Part III, Chapters 4-6

Quote- Greenstreet had this to say in his diary, “… I fail to see any cause for excitement as it puts us no nearer getting out.  What i would far rather see would be a crowd of seals coming up so that we might get food and fuel.”

Discussion- The crew have resigned themselves to the style of living they have experience for the past couple months. They realize the journey to land is futile, and the sight is a tantalizing reminder of a comfort the men cannot enjoy.  Because of the conditions of the weather and the ice floes themselves, the men can neither sail or travel by land to reach their destination which was so close within their grasp.  This quote shows that the men are more in favor of a practical event that will help them survive for the time being, such as the capture of seals, instead of desperately hoping that some miracle would allow them to reach land.  Another large swell began and caused a crack down the floe.  Throughout the progression of these three chapters, cracks caused by swells continue to decrease the size of the floe.  Because of the shortage of rations and blubber with which to cook the food, the dogs are killed and fried, and the men rejoice when a large leopard seal is butchered.   The men continued to try to predict where the floe would end up, and the crew’s constant goal of land changed from island to island depended on drift and currents.  Towards the end, Clarence Island seemed to be where they were headed.  The floe was becoming so small, Shackleton finally gave the order to take to the ships and head to land.  The setting of the novel, which for the past four or five month had been different camps on floes, would soon change. By this point, there was no turning back.

Literary Terms: setting- A large majority of the novel so far has been set in the camps the men had pitched on large chunks of ice after the Endurance was abandoned.  Now, the setting was going to change, for the men took to the boats to head to land, and the ice closed behind them.

Endurance, Part III, Chapters 1-3

Quote- “Only if the pack chose, they might be permitted to escape, but for the present they were powerless; there was no goal, not even the smallest achievable objective to aim for.”

Discussion- By now, the men have completely forgone their optimistic outlook.  They are running low on stores, thanks to Shackleton’s odd way of displaying his optimism and leadership, and still have not found a safe way to continue forward.  Restlessness and even fear begin to grow among the men.  The tiny flickers of hope the men occasionally experience, such as the strong gale that blew them more than 80 miles in the right direction, never amount to anything significant and could even cause the men to become even more disappointed or fall into a deeper depression.  It was up until this time that the men had kept their optimism because they could actively participate in the effect to reach land and move forward.  Now they were completely at the mercy of the ice, currents, and gales, and there was nothing more they could do.  They reluctantly resigned to the occasional hunt and large amount of thinking.  This quote clearly describes the utter helplessness that the men were subjected to.  All they could do was sit and wait, and pray that the floe moved in the right direction.  Some were unsure they would make it out alive.  Rations were running low and dogs are being killed to save food.  Macklin even uses an allusion explorers would recognize when he writes in his diary that he fears the crew might face some of the hardships of Greely, whose was the leader of an expedition from 1881-1884 in which more than half of his men died of starvation.  There were few things to occupy the time other than playing cards and talking about the wind and food.  Thankfully though, near the end of the second chapter, a huge flock of penguins appeared around the camp and the threat of starvation was no longer imminent.  The crew faced one more disappointment before the end of the fourth chapter, unfortunately.  They observed movement of the ice caused by swells from the ocean.  To their utter dismay, the swells disappeared as quickly as they had appeared.

Literary Term: allusion- Macklin makes an allusion to a famous explorer in his diary to display his fear about the shortage of stores and means of obtaining food.  His crew members and other explorers of his time would recognize the name Greely and would understand the predicament Macklin was trying to explain.

Small Adélie penguins without much blubber, but in large numbers can be a substantial food source

  

Endurance Part II

Quote- “Underlying the optimism and good spirits of the party was a deep-seated confidence that their situation was only temporary.”

Discussion- Not only does this quote display the continued optimism of the men in their precarious situation, I also believe it to almost be a non sequitur, because it seems that the crewmen have no logical reason to infer that they are going to be safe.  I feel like it is wonderful and beneficial for the crewmen to be positive and optimistic, for it helps with energy and morale, but they are stuck in a quite unfortunate situation with no clear or definite way of getting out.  The men are sleeping in tents on the snow and are even beginning to eat blubber for warmth.  Eventually, they succeed in rescuing a large amount of stores from the sinking ship, stores that could last them into the winter.  This is seen as a great accomplishment and lends itself to even more confidence among the men.  They are situated, as comfortable as possible, on a large ice floe waiting for a way to travel to land to obtain more stores.  It seems to me that the men’s fate completely relies on whether the ice floe they are currently camping one will drift or be blown close enough to their destination of land that they can make it the rest of the way themselves.  This dependence is evident in the joy the men display when a strong southerly gale causes a two-day blizzard.  Even as preparations are being made to get ready for Shakleton’s plan to travel, the men continue to be content with the schedule of camp life.  Only after they men run out of things to do do they become restless and ready for movement.  While all the crewmen are living in the moment and rarely think about the upcoming future, Shackleton remains distant, as the weight of the responsibility he carries causes him to appear aloof.  At the end of this section, the men are moving camp, and are far less optimistic.

Literary Terms: non sequitur- The crewmen seem to believe that the misery of their situation would soon be overcome, though they had no logical proof from which to reach their inference.  The men are stuck on a large block of ice that may or may not drift and blow in the direction they require, with stores that will only last a certain time.  For all they know, they could be dead in less than a year if they don’t find a way out.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage Part I, Chapter 1

My name is Nina Schalk and I am blogging about Alfred Lansing's book, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage


Quote: “As they went over the side onto the ice, most of the men felt immense relief at being away from the doomed ship, and few if any of them would have returned to her voluntarily.”


Discussion: The crew is in dire straits at the opening of the novel Endurance, as their leader Ernest Shackleton must give the order to abandon ship after a hard-fought battle against the water and the increasing pressure of the ice.  Though the crew had seen this coming for a while and the large majority breathed a sigh of relief when the order came, Shackleton saw the event in a different light.  Out of all the men aboard the ship, Shackleton seemed to be the only one to realize the hardships that lay ahead.  Not that the men were oblivious to their not-so-ideal situation, just that they all seemed to have a prevailing feeling that somehow everything would turn out alright.  Shackleton was in charge of making sure that happened, and he was also in charge of the entire expedition itself, the goal of which was to cross the Antarctic continent.  The men had no way of communicating with the outside world and were many miles from any sort of land, but knowing that he was an experience and purposeful leader, they had confidence in Shackleton.  The above quote summarizes the mood of the shipmates after getting on the ship.  A couple unlucky crew members by the names of Alexander Macklin and Frank Wild were ordered to return to the boat to retrieve firewood and concrete details were used to describe how the ship was violently pressured until the walls came in sounds came forth sounding like a tortured animal.  These sounds were an example of dissonance, as they were harsh and without pattern or rhyme.

Literary Terms: mood- The emotional atmosphere in the first chapter is primarily one of shared relief between the crew mates as they are finally given the order to abandon their sinking ship.

           Concrete details- The author clearly and specifically describes what the heavy, moving ice floes are doing to the tough ship.  He tells how the ice is pushing the boat from multiple sides and even though the walls are many feet thick, they bend in like a new sapling.

           Dissonance- The sounds given off by the sinking ship are very harsh and discordant.  They are compared to various other sounds, such as a train and a dying beast.

This is the Endurance after she was abandoned

An example of the ice floes the ship may have encountered

           

Endurance Part I, Chapters 2-8

Quote: “The Endurance was one microcosmic speck, 144 feet long and 25 feet wide, embedded in nearly one million square miles of ice that was slowly being rotated by the irresistible clockwise sweep of the winds and currents of the Weddell Sea.”

Discussion- This display of strength by the floes was not the first or the last that would wreak havoc on the ship.  Every time it seemed that the ship would be crushed, she managed to get out or somehow overcome the ice, and each time, the men grew more confident in the power of the ship.  The quote shows the utter helplessness of the situation, for the men could do absolutely nothing to reverse or change the effect the ice would have on the ship.  Still the crew, with the exception of Shackleton himself, continued to keep their optimism about the fate of the ship and the future of the expedition. The men may have believed that the ship could withstand any amount of barraging, but the author leaves little hints while describing the making of the ship that foreshadow the possibility that the ship will not deal with the pressure as well as everyone thinks she will.  When describing to the reader how the Endurance was built, the author makes a note to point out that the ship was not designed to cut through thick floes, only to swiftly move through loosely packed ice.  The ship was carefully, delicately, and meticulously formed using thick timbers of oak, double the number of frames, and employing other measures to strengthen the ship.  It was even said that she was the second-strongest wooden ship ever built.  In addition to the detail the author gives to the ship, he also thoroughly describes most of the crew members and how they came to be a part of the expedition.  Shackleton’s method of choosing the men lent a lot to his character, as he was quite whimsical and capricious.   By this point in the novel, the reader understands how the ship was built, how the expedition came to be, how the crew was chosen, and the intense effects of the ice and its pressure on the ship.  The reader also begins to wonder how the ice will continue to damage the ship and affect the crew.

Literary Term: foreshadowing- The reader becomes prepared for more damage caused by the ice when the author continually mentions the movement of the ice, the gales, and the subsequent pressure the ship had to endure.

Weddell seals were a great source of food