Theresa Matthews

03 May 2004

Explorers:  The Modern Day Hero

                        The growth and modernization of societies have forgotten the need for the epic Odysseus-like heroes.  Heroes of Odysseus’ grandeur shaped and formed the psyche of primitive peoples. Even so, mankind’s belief in myths and astrology has long since been displaced by an “economic-political organization…in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources”(Campbell 387).  Knowledge, science, and technology are the new gods of modern society, leaving a void in man’s “focal point of human wonder”(391).  Thus, Joseph Campbell describes man’s predicament, “Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms…It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse”(391).  Consequently, the character of the explorer, exemplified by Pym in Poe’s Author Gordon Pym,  and the polar explorers, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Richard Byrd, and David Brainard in Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration, provide the heroic model of the Rite of Passage for society to emulate in life’s quest for individuation.

            The first stage of the heroic cycle is the unconscious call to adventure into the unknown: the separation of the hero from the known and secure existence in society. The adventure is dangerous, fraught with peril and inhumane challenges.  The explorer, knowing risks and dangers exists, readily heeds the call.  Acknowledging the call  separates the explorers from the ordinary men of society as heroes. Their acceptance of the summons and commitment to the journey reveals to mankind that through the defeats and failures, they become a better person.  Submitting to the call provides opportunities to “engage in adventures far beyond what [one] might expect in the ordinary world” (Hubbell 11).  Modern society has become ensconced in the banalities of worldly possessions and personal gains and fears the risks of the “often perilous journey that leads to personal development”(12).  Thus, the explorer demonstrates to society that individuation is a precarious and challenging journey, but the rewards of the pursuit results in the “inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us”(Campbell 391).

  Pym, the protagonist in Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym, realizes that exploring the oceans is his “destiny…a prophetic glimpse which [he] felt…bound to fulfill”(13). Richard Byrd, during his solo sojourn in Antarctica for one winter, describes his stay as “mystical,” and he divulges, “There were moments when I felt more alive than any other time in my life”(139).  Apsley Cherry-Garrard, on a Polar expedition for the sake of science, awe-struck by the ice world, remarks,“…we were witnessing a marvel of the natural world”(95).  David Brainard, one of six men to survive a twenty-four man mission to “man a weather station on the shores of Ellesmere Island,” endured bitter starvation and immeasurable sufferings by submitting to the call of the adventure into the unknown.

            Continuing in the heroic cycle, the hero must successfully pass through initiation to prove his worthiness to move on to the next stage.  The explorer’s journey into the unknown coincides with this stage by their ability to survive and endure mental and physical hardships.  They wisely accomplish this feat by using their mind to escape their severe surroundings. 

Pym finds relief from thirst, hunger, and agony when he “fell into a state of partial insensibility, during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination” (Poe 74).  Pym’s images of “dancing girls,” “green trees,” and “ripe grain” are an elixir that suspends his distress if only briefly. 

Brainard is not able to lapse into mental bliss, instead his “wretched circumstances . . .counteract” his “universal sorrow” by allowing him to become emotionless and indifferent to the suffering, death, and sorrow of his existence(244).  Then, Cherry-Garrard and his companions realize their quest to find the “Emperor penguins” is “folly,” and “yet with quiet perseverance, in perfect friendship,” they continue the doomed expedition(77). 

They could not permit their minds to acknowledge failure; instead, they actively participated in a pretense in order to complete the journey. 

Accordingly, Byrd’s intolerable isolation physically separates him from the world, while his mind “possessed the flight of a falcon,” freeing him to revisit his “family at dinner time”(146).  Thus, Byrd is able to leave the uninviting unknown and encounter once again the familiar, the security of the known.  In each of the explorers, the mind is a bountiful resource providing reprieve from intolerable conditions indelibly demonstrating their mettle as a hero.

Achieving success in the initiation stage, the hero “then withdraws for a period of time in preparation for the next, active phase”(Humanities 3).  This stage involves looking inward, facing one’s deepest fears, and “achieving an awareness of one’s unique identity or mission”(3).

Pym’s stow-away adventure in the stowage of a ship becomes an entombment of isolation that forces him to rely on self-preservation and determination to survive.  Pym “was opposed with a multitude of gloomy feelings”(Poe 20).  Pym’s “solitary and cheerless condition” left him in a “stupor” that he battles continually until he is rescued (21).

Byrd’s isolated “environment was intrinsically treacherous and difficult,” and he frequently recalls “bitterly and provokingly” memories that deepened his depression(146).  Creatively constructing methods to occupy his mind, Byrd convinces himself that he has “licked” the “after-supper depression”(155).  Cherry-Garrard and his crew began “to think of death as a friend”(99).  Their journey engulfed “such extremity of suffering” that death seemed the plausible and welcomed solution.  However, the polar explorers found solace to continue in their mission.

  Brainard’s journey of death and starvation leads to his desperate cry, “My God!  This life is horrible; will it never change?”(24). He met the unbearable horrors of gradual death so often that he wrote, “If I knew I had another month of this existence, I would stop the engine this moment”(244).  Again, reiterating the thoughts of the other explorers, death is a welcome embrace compared to the unthinkable hardship they endure.  Depression is the internal force that explorers learn to overcome or at the very least, come to terms with.

As the hero conquers the internal forces, he must now confront and overcome the external forces(Humanities 3).  The explorers are forced to tackle the monstrous environment of the physical world.  Poe describes the tortures of Pym and his mates as they extinguish the last bit of their water supply, “It is impossible to conceive our sufferings from thirst at this point”(103). Unable to pen the emotional and physical duress of Pym, Poe simply states it is “impossible” to describe.  Nonetheless, Poe adequately depicts the extreme conditions which explorers often find hostile and devastating. 

Brainard uses understatement and blunt language to aptly reveal his struggle with the desolate and nutritive deprived ice world, “What is remarkable is that we hunger for certain articles of food, but at the same time the sense of hunger is absent”(254).  The horror is the lack of emotion from Brainard.  Horrifically, he is fighting his physical needs, his mental needs, and the harshness of the environment.  Brainard realizes he is facing an agonizing death, yet he calmly writes in his journal the incredible sufferings he and his men endure. 

Similarly, Cherry-Garrard describes the awful reality of his “ghastly journey,” unveiling the terrors of his ice expedition. His adventure into the unrelenting, atrocious unknown reminds the armchair explorer that they “need not fear that [he is] trying to exaggerate” because even the most creative storyteller could not fathom “such extremity of suffering”(74 and 99).

The heroic explorers brave the vicarious external forces that nearly cost them their very lives.  It would be easy to give in to death, to ease the pain of the insurmountable sufferings by giving up.  Yet, they continue; they strive; they conquer.  With great effort, they struggle through these challenges to pass on to the next stage.

            “In a sense, [the explorers] labors of stage four simply continue into stage five, for here [they] must confront physical death—the greatest foe of all” (Humanities 3). Accordingly, explorers are exposed to a sundry of environmental extremes that necessarily requires self preservation come before etiquette, social mores, and personal mores.  They must physically and mentally withstand the assault of death.  Fiction and non-fiction alike reveal the mettle of an explorer when exposed to shocking inhumane conditions. 

            Poe’s fictional explorer, Pym, and his stranded-at-sea mates are fast approaching the “horrors of famine”(92).  In the “interest [of] the preservation of [their] existence,” and in classic Gothic Poe style, cannibalism is the nutritive sustenance that sustains life(92).  Each man of the stranded party willingly submits to the “most abject and pitiable terror” of drawing lots to see who would be food for the others.  Although grisly, Poe encapsulates the hideous confrontation of death and man’s will to survive. 

            Brainard’s Antarctic ordeal closely resembles Pym’s ordeal.  Both involve killing one companion in order to preserve life.  Despite repeated warnings, Brainard’s comrade, Private Henry, steals what meager food is available, “seal skin lashing” and “seal skin boots,” which Brainard recounts “may seem insignificant. . . but to us such articles mean life”(248).  Because Henry disregards or is unable to refrain from “stealing the provisions” of the “slowly” starving party, an order is issued to shoot Private Henry.  First Lt. Greely emphasizes to Brainard, “This order is imperative and absolutely necessary for any chance of life”(248).  Both instances reveal the unforgiving environment that forces explorers to make inhumane decisions in order to survive.

            The sixth and seventh stages are symbiotical: the hero undergoes a transformation and rebirth.  The explorers reveal this stage in their sublime appreciation of the extreme landscape.  The wonder and awe of the unknown is surreal and often times a spiritual encounter.  In spite of the cruel circumstance of gradual starvation, Brainard is still able to marvel at the wonder of the ice world that so many of his friends have already lost their lives to, “Smith Sound is a beautiful sheet of water”(246-47).  In excruciating pain, emaciated beyond recognition, Brianard writes these thoughts in his journal. 

            Apsley Cherry-Garrard begins his narrative with the surreal descriptions of the aurora, “an arch of the palest green and orange, a tail of flaming gold. And again the spiritual veil is drawn”(60).  Cherry-Garrard regards the sight as a sacred moment.  He is deeply moved by the fantastic phenomena. 

            Richard Byrd without companionship and isolated in Antarctica for most of one winter experiences a moment of transcendence and feels “oneness- with the outer world which is partly mystical but also certainty”(139).  Each explorer transcends the cruelty of their journey in a spiritual cognition of their environment. 

            The final stage of the heroic cycle is the “boon” the heroes bring back to society.  The explorers share their heroic journeys with mankind to advance science and knowledge and to unconsciously provide the world with a “creative hero.” Hubbell explains another “gift” the explorers offer “is their acceptance of death.  For the hero, death has lost its sting…[and] all people can benefit from the…hero’s courageous example”(17).  

Finally, Modern day heroes are the explorers of the unknown.  They accept the call of adventure and willingly undertake a journey that changes their identity, their lives, and their perspectives.  They choose “to affirm life [which is] the key to an individual’s acceptance of…new perspectives…to individuate, helping one realize what one was meant to be, rather than blindly complying with societal dictates”(Hubbell 17-18).  Bravery and endurance are only part and parcel of their attributes.  They are self-disciplined as they face the most severe of unforgiving conditions, exercising control for self-preservation. Explorers adapt to the unknown region and survive in spite of crushing events that oppress their daring spirit. Most amazing is their ability to purvey the unknown territory and transcend beyond their suffering to reverently acknowledge the beauty of nature.  Alfred Tennyson’s epic hero, Ulysses, sums up the character of an explorer, “that which we are, we are,--One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”   

Works Cited

Brainard, David L. “Six Came Back.”  Ice: Stories of

            Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis. 

            New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

Byrd, Richard E. “Alone.” Ice: Stories of

            Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis. 

            New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

Campbell, Joseph.  The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  New

            York:  MJF Book, 19499.

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley.  “The Worst Journey in the World.”

            Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed.         Clint Willis.  New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

The Humanities Handbook.  “Myth and Mythology.”  29 Apr.

            2004<http://www.aug.edu/langlitcom/humanitiesHBK/hanbo

     ok_htm/myth&mythology.htm>.

Hubbell, Larry.  “The Relevance of the Heroic Myths to    Public Servants.”  American Review of Public                  Administration. 20.3 Sept. 1990: 139. 20 Apr. 2004

            <http://web2infotraac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/665/8             42/50232721w2/purl=rc1_EAIM_0.....>.

Poe, Edgar Allan.  Arthur Gordon Pym.  New York: Oxford UP,

            1998.