The Strong Will Continue.

“Parrado said, ‘look there to the west. Don’t you see? To the left? Two mountains without any snow?’ Canessa said, ‘but they’re miles away. It’ll take us fifty days to get to them.’”

This quote stuck out to me because I liked the fact that even though the survivors of the plane crash were sick and tired those who were able to climb the mountains did so. It is highly important that the strong people in the group took the initiative to do as much as they were able to. This is important because without strong group leaders to ration the food and seek help they all would have ended up dying or resulting in ‘every man for themselves’.

I found it ironic that those mountains are known as being impossible to climb however due to their circumstanses they were able to overcome their circumstances and acheive the impossible.

Humans, The Last Resort

“Carlitos said to Fito. He said ‘if we weren’t rescued, he’d eat one of the pilots to get out of here.’ There was a pause; then Carlitos added, ‘that hit on the head must have made him slightly mad.’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Fito, his honest, serious features quite composed. ‘It might be the only way to survive.’”

“For some days several of the boys had realized that if they were to survive they would have to eat the bodies of those who had died in the crash. It was a ghastly prospect. The corpses lay around the plane in the snow, preserved by the intense cold in the state which they had died. Canessa did not argue just from expediency. He insisted that they had a moral duty to stay alive by any means at their disposal, and because Canessa was earnest about his religious belief, great weight was given to what he said by the more pious among the survivors. He said ‘it is meat that is all it is. The souls have left their bodies and are in heaven with god.’”

“God wanted them to live, and he gave them the means to do so in the dead bodies of their friends.”

At this point the survivors are trying to climb the mountain to get to the other side where the tail of the plane is located. They are trying to get to the tail of the plane because they know it contains a battery which may be able to power the radio. In order to climb the mountain they need energy which they aren’t getting from eating chocolate and one shot of wine. The survivors have realized they need meat to survive on the mountains. Since they are all extremely religious I would not expect them to defy their morals. However as shown in the quote above, Canessa (the most religious) states that its only meat and the souls have left their bodies. He tries to make it acceptable to eat a human corpse claiming god wanted them to live by eating their friends.

I found this ironic because at first the survivors of the crash were joking about eating the pilots but now they are actually considering eating the preserved corpses. I feel that this is their last resort of survival and survival is more important than ones morals at this point in time…

The Beginning of the Beginning

“There was a roar of the engines and the plane vibrated as the Fairchild tried to climb again; it rose a little but then there came a deafening crash as the right wing hit the side of the mountain. Immediately it broke off, somersaulted over the fuselage, and cut off the tail. Out into the icy air fell Steward, the navigator, and their pack of cards, followed by three of the boys still strapped to their seats.a moment later the left wing broke away and a blade if the propeller ripped into the fuselage before falling to the ground. Without either wings or tail, the plane hurtled toward the jagged mountain, but instead of being smashed into pieces against a wall of rock it landed on its belly in a steep valley and slid like a toboggan on the sloping surface of deep snow.”

This quote stuck out to me because death can approach very quickly that your last moments alive are so unexpected that you have no time to react to it. At this point the plane is completely destroyed and the lives of the people inside are threatened. This is the beginning of the journey on the mountains. At this time the students are thinking that they are all going to die. For all of the 29 people in the plane, they most likely think that they are all going to end up dying stranded on a mountain or during the plane crash. Being a student on a plane with your fellow peers is great but when you notice one of them just fly out the back of the plane, emotions and thoughts are running wild especially when you are trying to save yourself.

Once the plane has stopped sliding down the mountain the thoughts going through the students minds are questioning what the next step is going to be. At this point they all realize that they are stranded on a mountain looking for their next chance of survival.

Literature Doesn't Change, WE DO

While reading through chapter 2, Frye's view stating that literature hasn't changed is quite interesting. He states “I’m not saying that there’s nothing new in literature: I’m saying that everything is new, and yet recognizably the same kind of thing as the old, just as a new baby is genuinely new individual, although it’s also an example of something very common, which is human beings, and also it’s lineally descended from the first human beings there ever were.” This quote had me shocked as I realized media in today’s society has more similarities than one would expect from a book or movie from so long ago. As almost everything in today’s society is advancing I questioned if literature could advance as well; it is evident that there are only so many emotions that directors can use when creating new media or books.

Assignment 1

In my opinion the quote, "one person by himself is not a complete human being," conveys that Frye meant behind every person are other people in which helped the individual to become the true human being that he or she is. I completely agree with this statement because if we take a look at a big corportation such as Apple; we see that engineers together bond to form and modify an idea to make it better. We see that they need other people's opinions to know what the average individual would expect from a new device. In summary the ideal meaning for the statement is that without human to human interactions and brainstorming one person by himself is not able to achieve as much, opposed to a group of individuals.