Zusammenfassung der Ressource
touching the void
themes
- Nature
- Man's struggle with nature.
- beautiful and threatening descriptions of the mountain
- characters are seen with a combat with nature
- A recurring image is of Joe and simon in the warm security of their tent.
- Technology protects them from wild nature
- When Joe is in the crevasse this image is ironically turned upside down.
- Joes been swallowed by nature.
- mountain is a metaphor
- represents the ambitions of humans
- desire to reach heights and places nature tries to keep them out of.
- life and death
- many references to death
- joe and simon were climbing for :
- the dream
- sense of achievement
- feeling of being truly alive
- chapter 2&3 shows all of these
- fate
- chapter 1
- Joe says something is bugging him. This idea, of some
deeper force deciding what would happen, appears
throughout the book.
- end of Chapter 3
- Simon is discussing how he fell from the cornice
and points out in a few minutes the visibility
would have improved and he would have seen
the danger.
- The unidentified 'thing' which Joe and Simon feel are key ideas of the story
- their destiny was not entirely in their own hands.
- the void
- shown in the middle of the book
- simon and joe ironically touch it
- ironic as you cannot touch something that is not there.
- joe 'touches' it in chapter 7
- when joe escapes; he encounters a personal, psychological void
- theme keeps recurring
- Joe is held so deeply in the vast emptiness of the crevasse that it seems to consume him
- The emptiness is not just physical but emotional and psychological.
- when in thieved joe had thoughts
- shakespeare passage on the simple, physical fact of death - "To lie in cold obstruction and to
rot"
- the lyrics to a cheesy 1970s disco hit - Boney M's Brown Girl in the Ring – an absurd contrast
- the voice' that does not seem to belong to him but which drives him to keep going and, ultimately, to
survive
- joe touches the void but finds within it something that saves his life
- friendship and trust
- Simon’s decision to cut the rope when Joe is hanging over the cliff.
- joe and simon are friends
- their fates are bound together and we admire the spirit between them.
- simon had to cut the rope - joe understood