Kristy Pawlak

4 March 2004

From the Private to the Public: How Audience Changes Everything

One of the most interesting aspects in the study of the Literature of Space and Exploration is the contrast between the non-fiction journal and the middle ground of the memoir.  The transition from private journal to public memoir represents an important change in approach to the material which manifests itself in the use of  imagery and meiosis as well as the degree of honesty or reliability with which the author relates facts and feelings.

One of the most important differences between a private journal and a memoir is the intended audience.  As pointed out by I.S. MacLaren in “Exploration/Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Author,” it is in the final two stages of this literature–the drafting of the manuscript and publication–where the audience becomes a factor for the author.  This is where the observations that the explorer originally made give way to the need for an author to create an appealing work (Rieck).  In rare instances the intended audience of a work can change after the work is underway.  In "Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals," the reader is given the chance to get an intimate glance at the explorer’s journals. The opportunity affords a rare, unedited personal look at his motivations and feelings. The audience intended for this journal by Scott, the author, is himself. He is recording details and thoughts that he felt he would need in order to recall the journey at a later date. He was also able to express personal feelings and doubts that he would have otherwise felt unable to release in his role as leader. In all likelihood, he would have later converted his journals into a memoir, as did Cherry-Garrard, but he never had the chance. Had he been able to convert the journals into memoirs, it is likely he would have done considerable editing to both remove personal aspects that he didn’t want revealed and to add more explanation to make events clearer to his reader. At the end of the journal, death has become imminent and Scott realizes that his journals will be the only link he has with the world. It is then he first acknowledges an audience other than himself and says, "Should this be found . . ." (115).

"The Worst Journey in the World" provides another first-hand account of the Scott expedition. Apsley Cherry-Garrard has converted his journals from the expedition into a memoir.  Public sentiment about the lost explorers was high and he knew that there was an audience for his account. He very clearly has an audience in mind and he writes accordingly. On occasion, he includes brief passages from his diary, but for the most part what the reader gets is the journey in retrospect. Cherry-Gerrard is afforded the luxury of being able to make his story appealing to his audience through the use of personal anecdotes, flashbacks, and imagery. Furthermore, he is always aware of the audience and addresses them and even manipulates them according to his purpose.

The Bedford Glossary defines imagery as "the actual language that a writer uses to convey a visual picture . . . or, . . . to create or represent any sensory experience" (210). Furthermore, it states that:

Imagery is generally intended to make whatever the author is describing concrete in the reader’s mind, to give it some tangible and real existence rather than a purely intellectual one. Imagery also provides the reader with a sense of vividness and immediacy. (211)

Notice that the important person in the use of imagery is the reader. Imagery in a work exists solely for the benefit of the reader. It is for this reason that Scott’s journal lacks the descriptive passages and metaphorical language that are present in Cherry-Garrard’s memoir. Of course, there are personal styles to be taken into consideration, but, in this case, Scott was clearly not writing in such a way that he expected the general public to be able to read his journals and vicariously share his experiences. In fact, the only time he really concerns himself with description is when he relates the conditions of the surface–a factor of great concern to the survival of his party. He takes the time to describe the surface as "soft loose sandy snow" (102), "a sort of flaky crust with large crystals beneath" (107), and "coated by a thin layer of wooly crystals" (109). Aside from this he uses frequent adjectives such as horrid, beautiful, awful, and worse, but he never really makes an attempt to write in such a way to give the experience a "tangible and real existence" for the reader (Murfin 211).

On the other hand, Cherry-Garrard uses vivid imagery throughout his memoir giving his reader "a sense of vividness and immediacy" (Murfin 211). His June 22 journal entry is replete with imagery:

A hard night: clear, with a blue sky so deep that it looks black: the stars are steel points: the glaciers burnished silver. The snow rings and thuds to your footfall. The ice is crackling to the falling temperature and the tide crack groans as the water rises. And over all, wave upon wave, fold upon fold, there hangs the curtain of the aurora . . ." (60)

In one brief passage the reader’s senses are immersed in the scene being described. Cherry-Garrard combines metaphor, description, onomatopoeia, and parallelism to bring the situation to life.

            In order to demonstrate the fact that the lack of imagery in Scott’s journal had less to do with style and more to do with the fact that it was a journal and not a memoir, it is illuminating to look at Cherry-Garrard’s description of falling into a crevasse as written in his journal in contrast to how he writes it in his memoir. First, the journal:

We went on, bending to the left, when Bill fell and put his arms into a crevasse. We went over this and another, and some time after got somewhere up to the left, and both Bill and I put a foot into a crevasse. We sounded all about and everywhere was hollow, and so we ran the sledge down over it and all was well. (87)

Now the memoir version:

Time after time we found we were out of our course by the sudden fall of the ground beneath our feet–in we went and then–‘are we too far right?’–nobody knows . . .Once we got right into the pressure and took a longish time to get out again. . . . he found crevasses well ahead of us and the sledge: nice for us but not so nice for Bill. Crevasses in the dark do put your nerves on edge. (87)

The first version very sucintly tells the facts, but the second engages the reader by creating a sense of anticipation and by using an almost humorous tone at the end. The journal entry was written by Cherry-Garrard with the purpose of jogging his memory when the time came to relate the event in the form of a memoir for an audience other than himself.

            Cataloging or listing is another device which can be used to drive home a point or a feeling to the audience. When Cherry-Garrard wants to tell the reader the problems that the dark causes the explorers he uses a list to make the reader truly feel the frustration that lack of sight is causing. He writes, "I don’t believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, . . .when you could see where you were going, . . . could see your footsteps . . . could see the lashings of the food bags . . . could read a compass . . . could read your watch . . ." (65). Compare this to Scott’s "Long time getting supper in dark" (114). Clearly, Scott did not need to describe to himself the difficulties of the dark, but Cherry-Garrard had to communicate the level of frustration to readers who had not experienced the situation first hand.

            The Bedford Glossary calls the use of understatement “meiosis.”  Specifically, it says that an author uses meiosis to “[describe] something in a way that, taken literally, minimizes its evident significance or gravity” (255).  It goes on to say that certain critics also consider “The use of simple, unadorned statement to underscore the pathetic or tragic” to be an example of meiosis (256).  Both of these classifications work well when evaluating writings about the Scott expedition.  Scott and Cherry-Garrard both have reasons to use meiosis though their reasons for using it differ and Cherry-Garrard uses it much more often. 

            As previously pointed out, the better part of Scott’s journal was not written for any audience other than himself.  Therefore, his use of meiosis is particularly personal and even psychological in nature.  By not giving vent to the true desperation of his situation, Scott is able to put off the inevitable step of acknowledging the hopelessness of his situation.  For instance, on February 19 he writes, “If this goes on we shall have a bad time” (103).  As if the conditions they had encountered so far had been pleasant!  But, as the journal progresses instances of understatement are few.  Scott has no need to lie to himself and honestly states the way things are.

            Cherry-Garrard, on the other hand, uses meiosis almost constantly to “underscore the pathetic or tragic” (256).  It is helpful to look at the distinction of “pathetic” and “tragic” characters to truly understand Cherry-Garrard’s  effective use of meiosis.  Bedford says that “pathetic characters are generally helpless, innocent victims suffering through no fault of their own.  Tragic figures . . . are in some way at least partially responsible for their fates” (Murfin 333).  Whether the explorers are considered pathetic because they really don’t have control over the weather and conditions or tragic because they did voluntarily choose to go on the expedition, Cherry-Garrard’s use of meiosis works to emphasize their plight.

            The examples of meiosis in Cherry-Garrard’s memoir are numerous, but some of the most striking include the description their experiences on a day with a temperature of -56 as having a “baddish time” (65), the experience of having the ice bang, groan, and then split right under their feet as “the effect was very jumpy” (82), and perhaps the most striking, the experience of being in a blizzard near Terror point, lost in the dark, with the tent snowed up and the sledge lost as “not altogether a comfortable” position (85). This last example also provides an example of another form of meiosis called “litotes” which “involves making an affirmative point by denying its opposite” (237).  Like the other details and images within the memoir, meiosis has a significant impact on the reader.  By just calling -56 “baddish” Cherry-Garrard lets the reader know how truly horrible other days must have been.  As with anything, sometimes it is easier to express what is by expressing what is not.  By seeing what is not considered by the explorers to be an unthinkable, unlivable situation the reader can appreciate the lengths they are going to and the discomfort they are enduring.

            A particularly interesting point about Cherry-Garrard’s use of meiosis is that he denies being anything other than straightforward when he says, “I am not going to pretend that this was anything but a ghastly journey . . .At the same time I have no wish to make it appear more horrible than it actually was: the reader need not fear that I am trying to exaggerate” (74).  This leads to another difference between a private journal and a memoir about the same experience—the honesty of the author, or the reliability of the narrator.  To begin with, the moment an audience is acknowledged by the author everything that is written is tinged with the knowledge that others will be judging the experiences which are related.  Whether conciously or not, the author will edit the experiences to create the desired effect on the reader.  If a situation is meant to be humorous then a certain tone will be employed.  Likewise, if the author wishes the reader to feel sympathy then certain aspects will be emphasized to a greater extent than facts or details which lead to conflicting interpretations of the event.  In addition, as Jane Ftacnik, points out in her essay “Shrimp, Ice, and Tents: The Genre of Exploration,” Cherry-Garrard adds personal reflections and opinions which set his memoir apart from a journal within the genre of exploration literature.

            The greater honesty in the personal journals of Scott is due to the fact that he is writing for himself.  He allows his journals to be an outlet for doubts and frustrations that he would not likely express to an audience.  For instance, when discussing the manner in which they were forced to eat the pemmican, Scott says, “we pretend to prefer the pemmican this way” (111).  He is honestly revealing the tactful instances of dishonesty in which the men indulged because each of them were playing before an audience.  He expresses doubts saying, “I don’t know what I should do . . .” (110) and “I don’t know what to think . . .” (105).  It was probably a release to be able to put these worries into writing because he could not express them to the men who looked to him for guidance and hope.  Finally, he makes admissions that he would never have made out loud when speaking about Oates he says that “the poor Soldier has become a terrible burden” (112).   Notice the change in tone once an audience had been acknowledged and he writes, “I take this opportunity of saying that we have stuck to our sick companions to the last . . .” (115).  No mention of them being burdens once he realizes the whole world may get a glimpse at what he writes!   This is not to say that Scott was some rude, insensitive phony, but, rather, that when writing for one’s self there is no need to censor those negative little thoughts that creep uninvited into one’s head.

            On the other hand, the reader is not quite sure when to trust Cherry-Garrard because he is actively trying to elicit certain responses from his readers.  In this endeavor he can even be contradictory as when he tells the reader, “I wish I could take you on to the great Ice Barrier . . .How peaceful and dignified it all is” (79) when he previously said, “ . . .any one would be a fool who went again” (65).  Clearly, in one instance, he was trying to cultivate reverence and awe for the beauty of nature and in the other he was trying to communicate the horrible conditions under which he was surviving.  In each instance he is successful, but when considered together it forces the question–What is more important to Cherry-Garrard his desired effect or the reality of the expedition?

            Clearly, there are significant differences within the literature representing the genre of Space and Exploration.  One of the most interesting changes occurs between the strictly non-fiction realm of the journal and the middle ground of the memoir.  By focusing on the uses of imagery and meiosis and by exploring the honesty and reliability of the narrator, these differences can be explored by looking closely at Scott’s journals and Cherry-Garrard’s memoir about the same expedition.