[Lansing] (Endurance) Part Five: Extension (Vocabulary Word: Pathos)

The crew has reached Elephant Island intact. However, the landing is bittersweet because of the next arm of the journey that Shackleton knew would have to happen. The crew would have to split up, and six men were to set sail once again in the Caird: "They would travel perhaps a thousand miles across the stormiest ocean on the globe. The ultimate goal was an island no more than 25 miles wide at its widest point." This invoked a personal feeling of pathos towards the crew. This feeling came not just from the fact that the party would have to travel more than twice their initial distance through rougher waters, but that the remainder of the crew had to rely on the unlikely chance of the Caird actually surviving the voyage.

The Voyages of the Escape Boats (Green - Patience Camp to Elephant Island: Red - The Caird's Journey to South Georgia)

This extension is similar to the last few minutes of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when Galdalf said, "The battle for Helm's Deep is over. The Battle for Middle Earth is about to begin." Although Gandalf's quote does not invoke sympathy, it models the scale of Shackleton's expansion. A larger, riskier battle had just started, one that would dwarf the Battle for Helm's Deep; likewise, Shackleton's extension was riskier and much larger in scale than the journey to Elephant Island. In both situations, the protagonists were in great peril before the extension.