touching the void themes

touching the void themes

1. Nature

   • Man's struggle with nature.
   • beautiful and threatening descriptions of the mountain
   • characters are seen with a combat with nature
   • A recurring image is of Joe and simon in the warm security of their tent.
     • Technology protects them from wild nature
       • When Joe is in the crevasse this image is ironically turned upside down.
         • Joes been swallowed by nature.
   • mountain is a metaphor
     • represents the ambitions of humans
     • desire to reach heights and places nature tries to keep them out of.

2. life and death

   • many references to death
   • joe and simon were climbing for :
     • the dream
     • sense of achievement
     • feeling of being truly alive
     • chapter 2&3 shows all of these

3. fate

   • chapter 1
     • Joe says something is bugging him. This idea, of some deeper force deciding what would happen, appears throughout the book.
   • end of Chapter 3
     • 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.
     • The unidentified 'thing' which Joe and Simon feel are key ideas of the story
     • their destiny was not entirely in their own hands.

4. the void

   • shown in the middle of the book
   • simon and joe ironically touch it
     • ironic as you cannot touch something that is not there.
     • joe 'touches' it in chapter 7
       • when joe escapes; he encounters a personal, psychological void
   • theme keeps recurring
   • Joe is held so deeply in the vast emptiness of the crevasse that it seems to consume him
   • The emptiness is not just physical but emotional and psychological.
   • when in thieved joe had thoughts
     • shakespeare passage on the simple, physical fact of death - "To lie in cold obstruction and to rot"
     • the lyrics to a cheesy 1970s disco hit - Boney M's Brown Girl in the Ring – an absurd contrast
     • the voice' that does not seem to belong to him but which drives him to keep going and, ultimately, to survive
   • joe touches the void but finds within it something that saves his life

5. friendship and trust

   • Simon’s decision to cut the rope when Joe is hanging over the cliff.
   • joe and simon are friends
   • their fates are bound together and we admire the spirit between them.
   • simon had to cut the rope - joe understood