The young men have been trapped for 59 days and, understandably, tempers are erupting. Canessa, nicknamed Muscles because of his stubbornness, is especially cranky.
"...Canessa lay around 'conserving his energy' or insisted on treating the boils that Roy Harley had developed on his legs. He also quarreled with the younger boys....He even quarreled with his great friend and admirer Alvaro Mangino... he told Mangino to move his leg. Mangino said that it had been cramped all night and so he would not. Canessa shouted at Mangino. Mangino cursed Canessa. Canessa lost his temper and grabbed Mangino by the hair. He was about to hit him but simply threw Alvaro back against the wall of the plane instead.
"'Now you're not my friend any more,' Mangino said, sobbing."
This childish phrase coming from the mouth of a grown man made me want to cry. It made me so, so sad to imagine these men, stuck in the fuselage of an airplane in the middle of the Andes Mountains, start crying and shouting childish insults at each other. They are just so weak and so tired and so sick of being with only each other for nearly two months that they are beginning to act like children. They have watched their best friends die and surrender their bodies to the survivor's lives, they have heard on the radio that their parents have given up searching for them, and now they are fighting with each other. It would make me want to act like a baby, too.
4/4 entries for 11/12/09
ReplyDeleteThis books seems to me like it has the potential to show action like Lord of the Flies--I wonder if that fiction tells a truth similar to this nonfiction. Your point about the narrator's involvement and how that affects his credibility is well worth asking. As the book evolves, do you find yourself forgetting about him or wondering more about his assessment of the situation as he tells these people's story?