Endurance Part V Chapters 4-6

Men left behind on Elephant Island.

In the days following the sailing of the Caird, the twenty-two men left on Elephant Island find themselves in a state of limbo. They have little to do except wait and hope for relief. Daily life in camp alternates between moments of peace and happiness and dark depression. The men had motivation to fight off boredom, as it normally led to negative thoughts.

"There was almost never any mention of the most probable reason of all... the Caird had been lost."

The television show Lost.

 The men prefered manual labor rather than entertaining the possibility that Shackleton would not make it.  To pass the time, the men work to make the island livable. They slowly improve their shelter and gather food. This time of simply living life day by day and waiting for rescue is similar to the beginning of one of my favorite television shows, Lost. In the show, the passengers of a plane crash work to survive together on a deserted island. The survivors must spend their days working to establish a home on the island while waiting for rescue. However, in Lost one of the most challenging aspects for the survivors is learning to deal with each other. The survivors of Endurance seemed above this problem. The men rarely argued and managed to solve many domestic problems easily. For example, one annoyance to many of the men was when one of them would need to relieve himself in the middle of the night, often stepping on many of his roommates. Instead of letting the annoyance fester into anger, the men found a comical solution.