Endurance: Part 1 Post

The first section of the book wasn't as interesting as I was hoping it would be.  I thought that the book seemed to move extremely slow in the beginning.  I also found myself slightly confused by parts of the storyline and the terminology used as well.  I will say that it did seem to get a little more interesting later in section one after the voyage began and problems started to arise.  One of my favorite parts during the first section was when Shackleton sat down at table and said the following story : "Shackleton said there was once a mouse who lived in a tavern.  One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold.  When the mouse had finished, he sat up, twirled his whiskers, and looked around arrogantly. "Now, then," he said, "where's that damned cat?"  I found this to be pretty funny and it made me think of the saying that people use when they refer to someone as having "beer muscles." I liked the metaphor that was used in Chapter 3 that described the ship fighting against the ice.  "As Orde-Lees, the storekeeper, put it, "frozen, like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar."  I also found it interesting how the author refers to the ship as if it is a human. I can tell already just how much this book is going to relate to motivation. Towards the end of part one the confidence of the men in their ship improved.  As Greenstreet recorded in his diary on September 1: "She is stronger than we thought, and providing we don't get much heavier pressure...we should pull through all right."  I'm sure the men on this voyage are going to face many more obstacles as the journey progresses, but I do predict that when all is said and done they will reach their destination and accomplish their goal.