Changing the way you learn

touching the void themes

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

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touching the void themes

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	Created by chloe makin over 9 years ago