Opening Chapter

Touching The Void
by Joe Simpson & Chris Bonington

Due Date - September 22nd

Available at the SCCC Ammerman Campus College Bookstore and Amazon.com

This Opening Chapter is required by all students and is one of the two required chapters in commom; the second is the Collaborative Survival Connections chapter.

  • Write between 1000 and 1500 words for each chapter
  • Quality prose counts. After the minimum, mere quantity is irrelevant
  • When using sources, they must be documented using the MLA style sheet.
  • Avoid all spelling and mechanical errors.
  • Use sentence variety. All simple sentences make for dull reading.
  • Use a variety of punctuation: semi-colons and colons.
  • Support your observations with specific text from the selection.
  • Prose should be mature, considered, thoughtful and effective
  • Style should be academic and free of excessive informality and colloquialisms
  • I'm not looking for regurgitation and formula prose. I want it to be yours and meaningful.
  • Post it to your web page by recommended due date. Do not send the instructor e-mail attachments as evidence of your doing the chapter.
  • Notify the instructor and class of your posting. Include your url.

Taken from a review:

This book, Touching The Void, recounts an amazing tale of courage, fortitude, and the will to live, despite dire circumstances. The author, Joe Simpson, and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, attempted to ascend a perilous section of the Peruvian Andes. Near the summit, tragedy struck when Joe, up over 19,000 feet, fell and hit a slope at the base of a cliff, breaking his right leg, rupturing his right knee, and shattering his right heel. Beneath him was a seemingly endless fall to the bottom.

When Simon reached him, they both knew that the chances for getting Joe off the mountain were virtually non-existent. Yet, they fashioned a daring plan to to do just that. For the next few hours, they worked in tandem through a snow storm, and managed a risky, yet effective way of trying to lower Joe down the mountain.

About three thousand feet down, Joe, who was still roped to Simon, dropped off an edge and found himself now free hanging in space six feet away from an ice wall, unable to reach it with his axe. The edge was over hung about fifteen feet above him. The dark outline of a crevasse lay about a hundred feet directly below him.

Joe could not get up, and Simon could not get down. In fact, Joe's weight began to pull Simon off the mountain. So, Simon was finally forced to do the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He cut the rope, believing that he was consigning his friend to certain death. Therein lies the tale.

What happens next is sure to make one believe in miracles. This is an absorbing read and one of the great stories in mountaineering literature.

Your essay should encompass/address the following issues/questions:

You shoud not answer each question individually but instead write your own critical essay touching upon the issues addressed by the questions.

  1. How far can the human body be pushed before total collapse?
  2. What can the mind endure before succumbing to what seems like inevitable termination?
  3. How have the authors wrestled with issues of bravery, friendship, physical endurance, the code of the mountains, and the will to live.
  4. What would you have done if put in the same position as the cutter?
  5. What is it that compels certain individuals to willingly seek out the most inhospitable climate on earth?
  6. What is it that drives climbers to risk their lives in an attempt to leave footprints where few or none have gone before?
  7. With a smashed, useless leg, Joe and his partner must struggle down a near-vertical face--what enables both climbers to forge on, despite the storm and the odds against survival?.
  8. In literary study, students in English encounter gripping, detailed, and concrete accounts of individuals who face choices about the right thing to do. Because these accounts mirror the circumstances and choices that readers themselves face in everyday life, they can learn from them how to see themselves more objectively, more comparatively. What have you learned about yourself from reading this account? How can you see yourself mroe objectively and more comparatively?