Blog Ten: Endurance Pg 229

Throughout the novel and mostly in the later parts of it, Alfred Lansing wants the reader to feel for the men stuck in their desperate situation.  When reading, one can just feel the pathos he is trying to evoke.  "One-third of the sentence had been served." No, they are no in prison, they are not enclosed in a building, and they are not actual convicts.  Instead the six men sent on the rescue journey are prisoners to the seas enclosed in the only sea worthy vessel they could muster. We, as readers, have been feeling for all the men throughout the novel, but as the book progresses, we begin to feel more and more sympathy for them.  Their situations never improves for more than a day at a time and it truly is like they are imprisoned.  For the men on the island, their situation is not much better.  They are also stuck there without the capabilities to help themselves.  Being stuck in the shelter that they constructed sitting on their desolate island truly does compare to being imprisoned.