J Emmerson's Online Journal

Pg 63 Japanese climbers

“To his horror, he had then seen the falling leader jerk and twist and, without a sound, pull his partner into the void.”

This quote has two different parts to it. There is a literal part and a figurative which comes after. In this first part Joe is describing what Simon would have seen during a climbing in the french alps. He is talking about a pair of Japanese climbers that were ascending at the same time as Simon and his partner (Jon). The quote shows one of the dangers that you can face while trying to climb a mountain. This is of course falling.

“To his horror”. This part of the quote suggests that seeing the climbers falling is disturbing to see, which it would be. Seeing an event like what is described would psychologically affect you after and make you think about how vulnerable you actually are when climbing a mountain. You could fall down at any time. The climber is then described as jerking and twisting while he is falling. The thought of falling down 2500 feet to your death is horrifying, so much so that anybody in this situation would not be able to think about it, but instead show a physical outburst in fear/distress. “without a sound”  The quotation further supports that it is extremely hard to process the thought of dying because the Japanese climber cannot even scream while falling.

“pull his partner into the void”. This is the Figurative part to the whole quote. It could be thought that Joe is referring to the massive space below the falling climber (or climbers). Alternatively it could be referring to desperation because hope would be lost in a situation such as this. Therefore there is a void of hope.

P 58 Premonition

” I had sensed that something would happen without quite understanding what it would be. I didn’t like this irrational theory.”
This quote suggest that Joe sensed that Simon would fall over the edge of the mountain before it happened. This in turn makes you think that it is possible that another event will happen further along in the book as he will sense it.

P 63 Japanese climbers

” When they reached the summit headwall Simon had seen the leading Japanese climber fall outwards and backwards, arms outstretched in surprise, the awesome 2,500 foot plunge, visible through the breaks in the cloud, was framed behind him. To his horror, he had then seen the falling leader jerk and twist and, without a sound, pull his partner into the void.”

This quote foreshadows an event later on in the book. Joe is talking about an event that Simon experienced and saw while they are climbing down suila grande. There is also a great amount of detail and description on the events that happened with Simon and  Jon (his partner at the time).

In he quote Joe includes a reference or alludes to The void by saying the two climbers were falling into the void. This can mean that the person is pulling them into the massive space below it is likely to be talking about death. The reason for this is that the Japanese climbers are both falling down a 2,500 foot drop and their chances of surviving is extremely small.

P 72  Something dark

” Something terrible, something dark with dread had just occurred to me, and as i thought about it I felt the dark thought break into panic”

This quote talks about the darkness appearing in Joe after he seriously injured his leg. This darkness is probably despair, as Joe knows that this injury is serious. That it will most likely kill him. He also knows that he is threatening his Simon’s life, if Simon helps him of course. There is desperation in Joe because he “knows” that he is going be left on the mountain to die, therefore making him panic.

People who think that they’re important:

There are people just like you or me that think they are more significant than the average person, when truthfully these people are just self obsessed gits. An example is the sort of person who will sit on the bus or train, in the seat meant for people that are less able to stand, these people are either elderly, pregnant or injured. This person is uploading a selfie with today’s breakfast, while a 90 year old grandma, who recently broke her hip is having to stand with crutches after the replacement, all because this person is so self-infatuated. The old lady has to endure the one and a half hour journey to visit the grave of her recently deceased partner. Mr self obsessed also doesn’t notice that people actually don’t care what he has for breakfast, lunch or dinner any day of the week or even the year, he’s still smiling smugly at his accomplishment of letting the world know about the breakfast that he had this morning. The worst thing about the whole scenario is the fact that the selfie with breakfast was the first update, of many to come.

There’s another person sitting just a couple of seats away from him, a girl about twenty years of age, maybe younger, possibly older. In this week alone she has taken 240 selfies and it’s only Thursday morning. You can see that she has make-up plastered on her face, like the paint on a 1960’s Mercedes Benz. This make-up of course is applied extremely thickly as she doesn’t want to receive any nasty comments from any of the one billion followers she has on Instagram, otherwise she would have to seek admiration on a new profile or platform, to feel good about herself, her body and the fact she spends most of her time awake trying to take selfies.

I should mention the fact that this is happening because she’s under pressure from people to look like celebrities when we should accept that we are all unique in some way, and that should be appreciated. It’s honestly kind of stupid that men and women try to be something they’re not in order to be happy about themselves, it just results in low self esteem and unhappiness. This happens way too much on social media, just because people want to be accepted by the two billion other people on the social networking sites, including their friends.

Narcissism and being egotistical isn’t something that is new to society but has been around since human society has become more crowded. People say that social media has vastly increased this narcissistic behaviour because you can access more of it on the myriad of different platforms, some of which are: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and snapchat. These sites are the perfect outlet for people release their egotism into the wild, so it in a way encourages this sort of behaviour. This does not mean that the amount of people who are narcissistic has risen a ridiculous amount in the last 30-40 years though. Social networking/ media is not a bad thing, it’s just this sort of behaviour that people show on it and how they use it to do this.

Instead of being narcissistic people should be more reserved about their own life that they lead. It doesn’t mean that you can’t share things with friends, you should just reduce the amount of things that you post. On top of this you should make sure that the people that you have as a friend or follower actually are people that you get on well with, instead of just using some random person that you’re using to further the amount of followers or friends in order to look good to people. If these people do genuinely care, then when you upload a picture of something that you just bought they will think it is cool and the comments will be truthful, not fake. Try not to divert a conversation so it focuses on you as its most important part, add to it instead, listen to what is being said instead of ignoring it and getting bored. I’m not saying that you should never talk about yourself and focus things on you because it’s impossible not to be slightly narcissistic.

This is a quote from fight club: “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” This is true with a lot of people on social media as most followers don’t actually know you and most likely don’t like or care about you. They used you in order to get more followers and returned the favour. Another way in which this is true is when people buy clothes or technology to be accepted by a group of people so they can join it. These things are usually just expensive and the whole thing is just a status that doesn’t matter and isn’t worth it.

Isabelle Kerr’s article is pointless. It undermines itself. she is against modern slang, yet she uses idioms. The English she is using is derived from slang itself. It’s hard not to find a line where she doesn’t undermine herself, like a hide and seek game where there objects are transparent. At the bottom of the article it says this “Isabelle Kerr is an undergraduate student at Bristol University” I find it surprising that she is at university considering the article she wrote is just terrible. On top of that Kerr tries to say that her generation (20 years old) is responsible for slang, when we know that they aren’t. Kerr doesn’t accept her age, and doesn’t show it either.

Many of the words that we and Kerr use were made or at least used by Shakespeare. The person she said “will be turning in his grave”, this makes that point highly ironic as her example was a pioneer of the modern English language and is responsible for making it what it is today. Without the slang that he made (and used) the language and the world would not be the same, on the bright side the article wouldn’t exist.

“If the only words we can create are unimaginative hybrids of pre-existing words, or worse, shortening of already perfectly good words, then what hope is there?”. Kerr undermines herself again, and be warned it is not the last time you’ll see this sort of idiocy in this text, many more quotes (and face-palms) are to come. The words now are called “unimaginative hybrids”. We have to remember that many of the words Shakespeare used in his plays were taken from what people spoke in London and England at the time, meaning that some of the words were in fact hybrids of common words at the time. So what was used then isn’t much different to what’s used now. The rich and educated at this time probably looked down upon the “commoners” slang or language, and it clearly hasn’t changed much. We can see this from Kerr’s attitude towards any slang included the text. Slang is described as being “unimaginative”, but I’m pretty sure that if Kerr tried to make a word or piece of slang, it would be atrocious. Probably being based on a defunct word from the Elizabethan era.

“Among some of the greatest and most eloquent words in the English language, an invasion of bizarre, nonsensical and downright pointless words appear to have taken over.” This line is just stupid. Slang is described as being nonsensical, but fits the quote itself better. If slang was indeed nonsensical there would be no point in making it, but there obviously is, so the whole point and sentence is undermines itself therefore making the quote itself nonsensical and pointless. This quote is utterly useless and shows how Kerr has superior English to everybody else who can speak, read and write English, even Shakespeare. Who is obviously her idol of “correct” English that ironically used slang and invented words.

“These are in fact the pitiful emblems of the current young generation’s contribution to language. My generation. I am 20.” Kerr tries to take responsibility for the inclusion of some slang words that were included in the Oxford Dictionary Online, these are : Twerking, selfie, vom, unlike and srsly. She says her age at the time of writing the article, which was 20 years old. Just by this I can tell you that she is not responsible for these words, it would in fact be somebody of my generation (15,16 years old) or even younger. What supports this further is the fact that Kerr had to search what twerking meant, showing not only that her knowledge of slang is inadequate, but clear proof that her generation didn’t invent these word otherwise she would have known what twerking meant. On top of all of this Kerr is ranting and disliking the fact that the Oxford Dictionary Online has slang in it when it is said in the 2013 update on their blog that the ODO was created in order to focus on current English and includes modern meaning and uses of those words. so she doesn’t need to worry about this because she can use the Oxford English Dictionary, which does not contain these words and will not attack her as it is a historical dictionary documenting all of the core words and their meanings. She can admire Shakespeare’s brilliant words in this dictionary and not have to look at the unimaginative modern slang that she so hates. What’s even worse is the fact that Kerr says “while I scroll through the new listings of the online dictionary, I see the unfortunate positioning of twerk. It sits embarrassingly next to ‘twere’, an archaic word reminiscent of an era of great language and literary triumph.” This quote comments on the fact that ’twere is near to twerk in the online dictionary and how ’twere came from a time where there was great language and literary triumph, but doesn’t realise the word ’twere is a contraction or shortening of it were. This is not much different from vom or srsly as those are both the simplification of pre-existing words that are used in everyday language. The reason behind all of these being made shorter is pretty much the same, it’s simpler to say and write (more efficient), shortening a piece of text or speaking. In Shakespeare’s case it was useful because it helped to keep the Iambic pentameter that was used in many, if not all of his plays.

I’m going to get up from my chair and walk off to talk to people in the foreign language that has taken over, and enjoy speaking to people rather than sneering at the fact that they do not talk Queen’s English.

Here’s a quote from the update in 2013 explaining the differences between the Oxford Dictionary Online and Oxford English Dictionary :

“It is important to note that the new words mentioned above have been added to Oxford Dictionaries Online, not the Oxford English Dictionary. Why is this?

The dictionary content in ODO focuses on current English and includes modern meanings and uses of words

The OED, on the other hand, is a historical dictionary and it forms a record of all the core words and meanings in English over more than 1,000 years, from Old English to the present day, including many obsolete and historical terms. Words are never removed from the OED.”

this chapter takes place after chapter 3 and the event that happened at the end of it. Joe and Simon realise that the descent the have in front of them is going to be hard, and the danger they are in. This is because the accident that had happened previously and the fact that their descent is alread considerably harder than the thought it would be. The harder descent means that they make little progress in the three and a half hours that they have already climbed for.

The climbers only have an hour left before darkness and continue the descent. Simon makes his way down a gully between two flutings, with Joe following after him, but keeping some distance behind. After a while Joe thinks that he and Simon have made enough progress past the obstacle to be able to traverse across the easier ground. Joe shouts to Simon to stop climbing, but he cannot hear him properly, Simon shouts back but Joe cannot make out what he is saying.

This is when Joe climbs down further and finds that the gully gets steeper than it had been previously, he then starts to slip and tries to stop himself but finds it hard to stop himself, when he eventually does the snow drops from beneath him making him drop and smash into Simon.

Joe and Simon continue climbing, but have to deal with and climb many flutings and gullies and do so within an hour and a half. They eventually reach somewhere where they can =make a snow cave for them to sleep in. The first that Joe digs out is not suitable, forcing him to make another and annoy Simon with his frostbitten fingers at the same time.

As the two start rest Joe recalls one of Simon’s experiences on the French alps. Two Japanese climbers had been climbing close to Simon and his partner, jon. The two teams had made steady progress and both reached the summit headwalls, this is when Simon saw the leading Japanese climbers fall outwards and backwards. The leader jerked and twisted causing the other climber to fall and plunge down the drop, helples. The belay piton that had been there had fallen out.

The two climbers wake up in a better attitude than before, but this quickly fades when Simon shows his frostbitten fingers and how at least one of them had gone black in colour. The last of the gas is used up making their drinks for the morning. They set off, but find that the ice/snow is bad and causes them to slip and struggle. Joe narrowly avoids an accident.

In this chapter, Joe and Simon are still making their way up the mountain, but closer to the summit than before. It starts off with the two climbers leaving the area where they were sleeping after they packed all the gear into their bags. Joe comments that it is easier than it previously was. Joe leads out of the cave climbing onto good water ice. After getting around a cascade Joe and Simon see a barrier of seracs, and no easy way to pass them.

The two climbers make progress up the mountain, climbing 1,000 feet. They stop to decide how they are going to get past this barrier. Simon decides that the best way to do it is by climbing a cascade. Whilst climbing the cascade it gives way to weak snow and ice, fortunately nothing serious happens to Joe and Simon. This soft ice makes/made it harder for Joe to climb up as the ice axes have to be more deeply driven into the snow which will therefore use more energy, extra caution also has to be taken.

Joe gets past the cascade and soft snow and reaches the icicles, but drives his hammer/axe into the fringe of ice, causing the icicles above to fall down onto him, and simon. Joe gets injured and his mouth is bleeding.

Joe points out that it is noticeably colder than it was then it had been further down the mountain.

They climb further up the mountain and make more progress, not without trouble of course. 300 feet below the summit they decide to bivi for the night.. The next day the climbers reach the summit the next day after the small journey. At the summit Joe asks himself whether he is doing this because because of his ego or for pleasure. Simon points out that there is a storm coming, so they get their skates on and start climbing back down the mountain. Joe stays at the top, while Simon makes his way down the mountain, helping to ensure safety. Simon suddenly falls through the corniced ridge that he is on, pulling Joe to the floor and smashing his chest into snow.

chapter 1 :

We start off the chapter in Joe simpson’s tent, he describes how once you are in there and it is night time it can feel like are anywhere, the French alps, Scotland or even the karakoram. He also talks about how he feels warm and secure when inside a tent. Joe simpson and his friends Richard and Simon at the foot of Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes. Simon and Joe are climbers, whereas Richard is tasked with the hard job of looking after the gear while Joe and Simon are out climbing. Joe met or found Richard in a hotel in Lima, halfway thorough a six month exploration of south America.

Joe and Simon take practice runs on smaller climbs, when on these Joe finds out that the two of them are well matched. There is some concern about the weather as there are clouds that are forming, in the alps this would usually result in some sort of blizzard. They end up agreeing that it is nothing because there have been no serious concerns so far. They then plan to climb Seria Norte but find out that it is too dangerous to climb. After returning form the climb Joe decides to join Richard to buy cheese and milk from the girls in the hut. The next day Joe and Simon head or prepare for their main objective, Suila Grande.

chapter 2 :

The chapter again starts off with Joe waking up. He has the “hot aches” and is in a lot of pain from the coldness. Simon starts ahead of him and manages to get 150 feet ahead by the time that he starts. When Joe starts he is scared but once he gets into it he actually finds that he is enjoying it and the ice is brilliant. After climbing the 2,000 feet icefield the two climbers find that they have to climb another Icefield, but this time worse. In this icefield there is bare rock sticking through the ice, the ice is of poorer quality and rocks start to fall down the face. At one point a four foot boulder drops down and almost hits Simon. The chapter ends when Joe and Simon find a place to sleep after having to climb in the darkness. Joe talks about one of the previous trips where he and Ian (a friend) had settled on a ledge four feet wide and long enough for both of them to lie down head-to-toe, it then collapsed, luckily both of them were tied up meaning that nobody fell to their death, although Ian did manage to smack his head on some rock and cutting it.

The poem Do not go gentle into the good night is a poem talking about death, and how you should not give up on life when you are dying. it is also probably about making the most of your life. Iambic pentameter is used in each and every stanza, but only fully for the first line, after this it degenerates and fades away. This is a way of showing the dying. The dying of the wise men, good men, wild men grave men and Dylan Thomas’ father.  The Iambic pentameter in this is used to represent life or even a heartbeat in this poem, whereas in Hamlet Iambic pentameter represents sanity, or the mental condition of a certain character as well as the “nobleness” of them. (Hamlet while usually speaks in Iambic pentameter, whilst the gravediggers speak in prose.) This shows that while the two texts share Iambic pentameter they are used to represent different things.

The repetition of the “Do not go gentle into that good night” reinforces the poets idea that you should die fighting, holding on, not to just gently pass on.  Dylan Thomas is aware that death is inevitable and that we all must die eventually and shows this during the poem. The author also shows a different attitude towards death, or how a person lives in the face of death. This shown by the quote at the start of the paragraph and the title that has been given to the poem.

In Hamlet, (Act 1 scene 5) Hamlet’s father tells him advice ( and to kill his uncle ) on what he should do, but in this poem the son is telling the father what to do instead. This shows the “reversed” roles of each of the characters in the different texts.

Do not go gentle into the good night has a constant structure, called a villanelle. Villanelles have 19 lines in total, the first five stanzas are three lined and have an “aba” rhyming scheme. the last stanza is 4 lines and has an “abaa” rhyming scheme, conversely Hamlet’s to be or not to be soliloquy does not have any proper/ constant structure or rhyme scheme. This structure of Do not go gentle into that good night shows that Dylan Thomas is sure and confident about his idea that he expresses throughout the poem, whereas in Hamlet’s to be or not to be soliloquy the fact that it is not very structured shows Hamlets indecisiveness on whether to kill himself or not.

Farewell, the son of my right hand and joy; my sin was too much to hope of you, loved boy. Seven years were lent to me, and I pay, demanded by fate, on the day. Oh, how could i lose fatherhood now ! for why will man be sad about the state they should envy ? To have so soon escaped the worlds and bodies pain and rage, also escaping the problems of growing up. Rest in peace, and being asked, say “here does lie Ben Jonson’s best piece of poetry.” For his sake, a vow will be made, what he loves he may never like too much.

“shuffled off this mortal coil”

The coil in this quote is referring to the lamps used at the time that hamlet was written. These lamps burned this coil this is used to describe life, each minute that the coil burns could be compared to a year of somebodies life, eventually the lamp will burn out similar to a person’s life that will also end at some point. this is why mortal is used, which tells us that Hamlet or Shakespeare is talking about people (or mortal beings) rather than something else. “shuffled off indicates” that we (or hamlet) will move from living to dead in a slow way. The coil could also be compared to a spring, the spring will work properly until it eventually wears out.

The quote is euphemistic, this is because Hamlet is not able to deal with the thought of killing himself and has to say it in a way that he can cope with. The quote is also not talking about death directly and is talking about it in an indirect way. It is a metaphor about death as it Hamlet’s way of describing death (and the fact that it is not literally applicable ).

Metaphors are used many time in this play, another example of one is:

“her garments heavy with their drink, pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay ”

“Heavy with their drink” will be focused on first. The clothes are being described as heavy with drink like they are a person who has drunk too much and are now weighed down by the liquid. This quote is part of the description of how Ophelia, Laertes sister died. It could also be euphemism as it is not just saying that she drowned.

This is personification of the clothes, comparing or describing them like a human. It is also a metaphor as it is not being literal.