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Antarctic Exploration
Sep. 24th, 2008 04:21 pmSo, my new wikisurfing interest has been the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. I'm about to head out so this entry won't be as rife with links as it otherwise would be, but I wanted to quickly note down something that I observed.
I started out interested in learning a big more about Ernest Shackleton, who is pretty freaking awesome and of whom you can all expect an icon soon. But if you know anything about me and you know anything about Antarctic exploration, it should be pretty obvious to you that before I could exhaustively read about Shackleton, i got sidetracked by Robert Falcon Scott, aka Scott of the Antarctic (curiosity partly born from the Monty Python sketch about him) and his ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the Pole. Five men, including Scott and Edward Wilson, who seems like an interesting guy, reached the South Pole only to be hit by unseasonably harsh weather on the trip back, and all ended up losing their lives. One man died earlier, of injuries - possibly brain injuries from repeated falls on the ice - compounded by the exposure. The rest continued on, hoping to reach supply depots and eventually the camp, but they were travelling too slowly for their supplies to last. One member of the party, Lawrence Oates, had old wounds that were causing him to travel even slower than the rest of the group. Hoping that without him, they would be able to travel more quickly and reach supplies in time, Oates walked into a blizzard, without even putting on his boots because his feet were in such bad condition. According to Scott's diary, he was lucid, and told the others, "I am just going outside and may be some time," before walking into what they all knew was his death.
What I got thinking about, after reading about this, was that I read several articles about him and the expedition and so on, and they all referred to this act as a sacrifice. Then, I read the site about Wilson that I linked to and they referred to it as suicide. I just thought the different choices in words was interesting - it really gives a very different spin on the event. It's obvious to see why "suicide" would normally be avoided in this case, but it's interesting to think about the connotations and how people want to paint his actions.
Anyway, I'm sorry to cut this short but I've got to run. Most of that was retelling the story and very little of it was my actual thoughts. Whoops. Also, sorry for using this icon if it's incredibly tacky. I just liked the tone in this case.
edit, now that I'm not racing for a train: What really struck me, thinking about it, was how differently the two words hit me - I was actually surprised to see it referred to as a suicide, even though that's what it was. So I guess I myself think about the word suicide in a very specific sense - almost so that it doesn't mean technically "end one's own life" but rather more "give up on life" or "not want to live anymore." Since Oates was ending his life not because he didn't want to live but rather because he hoped it would help his companions, it doesn't come across as suicide to me.
I figure the authors normally stayed away from it because it is a more negative term, but also they were possibly just like me and didn't think of it as suicide. He was sacrificing himself, but he was also committing suicide. But the last author was focused not on Oates or on the scope of the journey as a whole - of which Oates' actions are a significant part - but rather specifically on Wilson. Oates' part was not the main focus, so the author is more likely to have used a more simple term, rather than thinking about his actions and what they meant. Like, "Then Oates killed himself. . . ok, I'll write that Oates' committed suicide," rather than "Then Oates walked into the snow to save the rest of the group," which is more likely to lead someone to use the word sacrifice.
I started out interested in learning a big more about Ernest Shackleton, who is pretty freaking awesome and of whom you can all expect an icon soon. But if you know anything about me and you know anything about Antarctic exploration, it should be pretty obvious to you that before I could exhaustively read about Shackleton, i got sidetracked by Robert Falcon Scott, aka Scott of the Antarctic (curiosity partly born from the Monty Python sketch about him) and his ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the Pole. Five men, including Scott and Edward Wilson, who seems like an interesting guy, reached the South Pole only to be hit by unseasonably harsh weather on the trip back, and all ended up losing their lives. One man died earlier, of injuries - possibly brain injuries from repeated falls on the ice - compounded by the exposure. The rest continued on, hoping to reach supply depots and eventually the camp, but they were travelling too slowly for their supplies to last. One member of the party, Lawrence Oates, had old wounds that were causing him to travel even slower than the rest of the group. Hoping that without him, they would be able to travel more quickly and reach supplies in time, Oates walked into a blizzard, without even putting on his boots because his feet were in such bad condition. According to Scott's diary, he was lucid, and told the others, "I am just going outside and may be some time," before walking into what they all knew was his death.
What I got thinking about, after reading about this, was that I read several articles about him and the expedition and so on, and they all referred to this act as a sacrifice. Then, I read the site about Wilson that I linked to and they referred to it as suicide. I just thought the different choices in words was interesting - it really gives a very different spin on the event. It's obvious to see why "suicide" would normally be avoided in this case, but it's interesting to think about the connotations and how people want to paint his actions.
Anyway, I'm sorry to cut this short but I've got to run. Most of that was retelling the story and very little of it was my actual thoughts. Whoops. Also, sorry for using this icon if it's incredibly tacky. I just liked the tone in this case.
edit, now that I'm not racing for a train: What really struck me, thinking about it, was how differently the two words hit me - I was actually surprised to see it referred to as a suicide, even though that's what it was. So I guess I myself think about the word suicide in a very specific sense - almost so that it doesn't mean technically "end one's own life" but rather more "give up on life" or "not want to live anymore." Since Oates was ending his life not because he didn't want to live but rather because he hoped it would help his companions, it doesn't come across as suicide to me.
I figure the authors normally stayed away from it because it is a more negative term, but also they were possibly just like me and didn't think of it as suicide. He was sacrificing himself, but he was also committing suicide. But the last author was focused not on Oates or on the scope of the journey as a whole - of which Oates' actions are a significant part - but rather specifically on Wilson. Oates' part was not the main focus, so the author is more likely to have used a more simple term, rather than thinking about his actions and what they meant. Like, "Then Oates killed himself. . . ok, I'll write that Oates' committed suicide," rather than "Then Oates walked into the snow to save the rest of the group," which is more likely to lead someone to use the word sacrifice.
