"Beach" Reads

Picking books at random off of my list of 200+ books-to-read, I seem to have a predilection for picking books about whaling and the frozen seas at both ends of the pole. Either that, or there are a lot of books chasing Moby Dick.

When I read Moby Dick, I didn't understand why it was a classic. It seemed to be more of a field guide to whales, with a story of a personal vendetta against an anthropomorphized whale thrown in. Looking back now, especially after reading several books about the same subject, I realize that Melville captured the seas and the wonder and mystique of the giant leviathan better than any author yet.

Indeed, there is something about the whaling profession that made climbing into a ship and setting sail for the outer limits of the known world, hunting beasts larger than the largest of ancient dinosaurs more like space travel. A whole new world of icy poles, endless days, and monstrous bears was opened up. For a writer, is there a setting with more potential? These three books dwell on the survival of man in these extreme latitudes.
Georgiana Harding tells the story of Thomas Cave, a whaler who took a bet to spend the winter alone on an island off of Greenland. In a land of endless snow and ice, in never-ending night, the landscape becomes a blank slate where the panorama of the mind takes over. Cave's ghosts of his past visit him in his solitude, yet his inward struggle for acceptance, for peace, seem elusive. When the ship retrieves him at last they find a man aged and withdrawn. He seems to have acquired a gift for helping men dispel their "demons", yet his reluctance to intermingle with humankind betrays his inability to dispel his own phantoms. The kernel of wisdom Cave receives from this experience seems to be "there are some places that man should not be" and "the only evil that exists is the evil that man brings with him".

That lesson is better learned in The Terror by Dan Simmons. It is based on a real ship that set sail in 1845 looking for the Northwest passage and was locked in the ice for 3 years. There were no survivors, so Simmons imagines a rich and thrilling existence for the doomed men as they battle the elements and a horrifyingly intelligent white bear (sound familiar?). Yet what really dooms the men is the greediness of the company that provided the ships with defective canned goods and the lust for power and revenge among the men. Despite the gloomy material, Simmons lines his novel with hope. Unlike in Moby Dick, acceptance ultimitely becomes the antidote to revenge and leads to new life rather than death.

Perhaps the most intriguing of the three is the non-fiction book Island of the Lost by Joan Druett. It chronicles the tales of two ships that wreck on a small island near the South Pole. Through the industry and skill of the first mate of one ship, the entire crew of that ship were able to survive almost an entire year before they were rescued. Another ship wrecked on the opposite side of the island. However, as if to add credence to Simmons novel, this crew self-destructs with greed, lust, and slothfulness. Only one man survived. Its a thrilling contrast, all the more because it's true.

As the winter wears (seemingly interminably) on, I will continue to plow through my book list, but perhaps I'll read something sunnier next time. My reviews of these books are at goodreads.