Topic > Close reading and interpretation of an abstract from Touching The Void

What are the differences between Joe and Simon's account of the event? This text is an excerpt from "Touching the Void". The style is autobiographical and provides us with two stories; one is Joe and the other is Simon. This text uncovers Joe's fall and how both climbers experienced it. Hopelessly, Joe hopes he hasn't broken his leg, but a few moments and realizes it's a bad break. On the other hand, Simon finds that Joe has fallen and shows emotionless, impartial and heartless feeling. I believe this text is aimed at people interested in mountain climbing and extreme sports. Being selfish and emotionless towards his friend-partner, Simon chooses the option where he has the best chance of survival. Both characters in the story told us their version of what happened with a different structure and technique. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Joe dives straight into panic mode; he therefore uses many graphic and grotesque images in his account of the event. We know this because in the text where Joe had fallen and was taking the test to see if his leg was broken, he said, “My knee blew out. The bone screeched and the fireball raced from his groin to his knee. This points to the fact that Joe uses graphic images based mostly on false beliefs to indicate and distribute the pain he is causing, the use of the verb "Grateful" indicates that his bones collide and with the force of the friction, they start shaking and shrinking, causing further pain: like after grating cheese with each passing moment. Furthermore, Joe also uses the metaphor "The knee blew out" to show the severity of the injury as only two of them are at the top of the mountain. This gives the reader the impression of Joe suffering brutally while hanging down the mountain and a vivid image in their mind that makes them feel really uncomfortable. The use of the short sentence gives the reader an imaginative and emotional effect. An example of imaginative effect is when the writer said "Grated bone", this made the reader imagine that he was grating the cheese, except its bones. The emotional effect for the reader was the intensity of pain that happened to him from all sides of the body, and the technique used to create the emotional effect is short sentences that also included a metaphor. In contrast, Simon uses direct language while describing the incident that occurred. This was demonstrated when Simon said, "It sounded pathetic and my immediate thought came without any emotion... You're dead... There's no two ways about it!" This results in Simon showing very little emotion as he evaluates the incident. We were given the impression of Simon as a very cold and emotionless person towards his climbing partner, who he describes as 'pathetic'. Simon also used short sentences like "you're dead" because it was said in a very calm way, this left the reader in an awkward/itchy situation. Therefore we saw Simon as a very cold individual, due to his practical language, which is quite direct. Both Joe's and Simon's stories use ellipses; both create different types of effects on autobiography. For example, in Joe's story he says: “Everyone said it... if there are only two of you, a broken ankle could turn into a death sentence... if it's broken... if...” and “left here? Alone?...” In this sentence I believe the ellipsis was used by Joe as a pause for reflection (pause to think). And when Joe uses the word "if" he's showing us that he really has high hopes that.