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| The goal island of South Georgia |
As the novel nears its end, we are given the viewpoint of those on the Caird during their journey to South Georgia. With chance not on their side, they work endlessly each hour of each day trying to beat the odds and survive. Nothing else even matters anymore, all they hope for is that soon they will wake up and their nightmare will end and they will see land. Heaving water, fighting off waves, chiseling ice, are the cycles they go through during the day. When they finally reach the halfway point, they know that they can’t give up because they’ve worked to hard to get where they are now. When they believe that at any moment, land might come into view, all the men watch in agony as hours pass with no luck. However, when land finally does come into view, all efforts are made to try and dock safely. After a few days of trying, they finally make it. All their effort, everything they had done to get to this point had finally paid off, they were going to make it.
This reminds me of the end of wars, the kind like World War I and II, the Civil War, the war our country fight to be a nation back in the 1700s. After years of fighting, death, and hate the end comes and people can celebrate and relax a bit. Sometimes people can just take a deep breath and finally think straight again. This is the same feeling the crew has; the end is so near, they can almost taste it. Lansing states, “Shackleton was sure the end was very near.”
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| A few graves of the fallen during WWII |
The literary term I associated with this section was understatement. The crew on the Caird might think that, for the moment, reaching the island and surviving was all that mattered. They were ecstatic and jovial caught up in the moment. However, their emphasis is on surviving the trip, but in the back of every reader’s mind is the fact that now the others back on Elephant Island can be saved now, too. The entire book has taken a turn for the better. This reaching the island could potentially end what has been years of efforts, struggles, pains, and hard work, but the author focuses on the temporary thrill of the crew of 6 being saved, thus making this scene and understatement.
I found it really interesting how you made a connection between past wars and the triumph of the crew of the James Caird. They must have felt more relief, hope, and joy at that moment than they had ever before, and as you said, that can be compared to the joy and happiness after the end of the war. People are excited to look toward the future, but just as Shackleton’s crew, they realized that they have so much more to go through before the war is truly over. The violence may have stopped, but there are many repairs to be made.
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