A better late than never post about the fact that Lansing has goals too

As we discussed in class, goals are important driving forces in all the texts we've read. Goals change and people must adjust. These goals do not come out of nowhere, rather someone enforces them. Shackleton lays out goals for the crew and adapts goals that he relays to the team, but this is a constructive text. Shackleton may appear to be a driving force, and we may think we are getting an honest depiction of the story because quotes are inserted to acknowledge our presence as readers. But this is all part of Lansing's strategy, which is a great one in my opinion and can be best describes by Kurt Vonnegut, when he said, "I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." It's like standing on the edge of a bridge, 700 feet above a river, looking down. You don't want to go over because you are reflective of your current state and can see your fear in front of you. Lansing tries to bring us to the edge of the expedition, so we can reflect on the expedition and see what might not have existed in the expedition itself. Maybe it wasn't Shackleton enforcing goals for the crew, but the setting of the arctic. The ebb and flow of the crew's goals could be a result of the simple movement of the ice.