Endurance Part I: 1-4

Endurance, by Alfred Lansing is about Ernest Shackleton's Trans-Atlantic Expedition's plight to survive being trapped in the harsh environment of the Antartic for over a year. The first part of the book starts at the beginning of the end. Chapter one, part one, begins with the evacuation of the ship, Endurance, by its crew. The next three chapters are inundated with concrete details of how the ship became stuck in the ice. Lansing writes, "Two or three times early in February they tried to free the ship...There was always too much loose ice floating around her and freezing up." (32). This explains how the ship became stuck in a nutshell. This quote lets the reader realize how futile the efforts of the crew had become. One can relate this single event to the sinking of the Titanic. No matter how hard the crew tried to keep the ship afloat it just would not happen, so they had to abandon ship. By the end of the second and third chapters, the reader has met the crew. By the end of the fourth, the mood for the rest of the book is a sharp decline. The men on the boat are stuck in an ice floe over 140 miles wide, and they have no way to get out.