Endurance Part 5: 4-6, Lansing

The second half of part 5 follows the 22 men who were left on Elephant Island to wait for the return of Shackleton to rescue them. Some of the men believed that it would only take until mid-May for them to be rescued. To pass the time, the men took notes and surveys on what food item they would most like to have upon their return home. It was almost unanimous among all of the men that meat would be out of the question. The crews' first choice was anything sweet. Lansing uses pathos to evoke a sense of sorrow for the men to the reader. One such way that Lansing does this is describing how emergency surgery had to be done on Blackboro to remove one of his feet that had become infected by ganggrene. The crew soon realized that they would have to spend their winter on Elephant Island, which everyone dreaded. Wild, who was now technically the leader of the men on the Island, set a goal for the men to be optimistic about; by mid-August, they would be rescued. However, 4 months later, mid-August came and went, and there was still no sign of a rescue boat. Orde-Lees wrote in his journal, " 'There is no good in deceiving ourselves any longer' " (215). One could equate the feeling of hopelessness to that of being stranded in a desert with no food or water. For the men on Elephant Island, it seemed that all hope was lost.