Crazy Quarter

Touching the Void Even Deeper

A. Words:

Keto-acidosis
Ruminated
Col
Cornice

B. Passages:

1: “Oddly enough the physical and emotional trauma experienced in Peru in1985 did not change my life. It was the success of Touching the Void and my future writing and speaking career that materially changed me. The making of the film will no doubt bring future changes and challenges.” (Simpson 214)

2: “Silent ice mountains gleamed white around me, and the glacier curved gently westwards to the black moraines above base camp. I felt watched. Something in the crescent of the summits and ridges looked down on me and waited. I stepped from the wreckage of the cave, and started to climb down. I was about to die; I knew it, and they knew it.” (Yates, Simpson 106)

3: “I was alive, and for a moment that was all I could think about. Where Joe was, or whether he was alive, didn’t concern me in the long silence after the cutting. His weight had gone from me. There was only the wind and the avalanches left to me.” (Yates, Simpson 102)

4: “As sleep crept swiftly through me I tried to shake off the thought of how close we had come to the same appalling end as those two Japanese. There would have been no one to watch us, I thought; as if it would have made any difference.” (Simpson 64)

5: “I looked down at the ground where I had been found lying face down on the rocks and then glanced up at the river bed of chaotic jumbled boulders. How on earth did I get down that in the dark?” (Simpson 208)

C. Three that stood out:

1: “I looked down at the ground where I had been found lying face down on the rocks and then glanced up at the river bed of chaotic jumbled boulders. How on earth did I get down that in the dark?” (Simpson 208)

It’s amazing what a person can do, what a person’s body can do when they are faced with death. Sometimes when you accomplish something, you later may wonder how you were able to do it. There should have been no way for Joe to have made it all the way back to camp. Especially in the dark where it is even harder to see where one is going. It was pitch black out there. All that lit the way was the stars and moon. What kept him alive were the choice of life or death, and the voice that kept pushing him the move forward. Neither Joe nor the voice wanted him to quit.

2: “Oddly enough the physical and emotional trauma experienced in Peru in1985 did not change my life. It was the success of Touching the Void and my future writing and speaking career that materially changed me. The making of the film will no doubt bring future changes and challenges.” (Simpson 214)

The physical and emotional trauma did give him PTSD though, but the fame and the attention is what had changed his life. Now he can share his experience with others and he has now found a new talent he never thought he had; the talent to speak. Talking about what had happen also allowed him to move on. He has discovered talents he had never thought he could posses.

3: “Silent ice mountains gleamed white around me, and the glacier curved gently westwards to the black moraines above base camp. I felt watched. Something in the crescent of the summits and ridges looked down on me and waited. I stepped from the wreckage of the cave, and started to climb down. I was about to die; I knew it, and they knew it.” (Yates, Simpson 106)

I really like this one. Yates and Simon had brought the mountains to life. They gave a mountain life. The feeling of being watch was brought by the guilt that he felt from cutting the rope. Simon did not know if Joe was dead or not, so he felt he might have killed Joe. Simon was waiting to die. I feel that he felt like it was a punishment for cutting the rope, or he was going to just plain die. He probably figured that he was not going to make back to camp alive. Also, not only was he waiting to die, the mountain was waiting as well.

posted by *I Rawk the Mic* @ 6/06/2007 09:32:00 pm