Reading Kayaking Among
the Ice Children I once more found myself asking “what makes an adventure
narrative?” Most of what we’ve read over the course of the semester has focused
on narratives in which something has gone absurdly wrong and the protagonist is
forced to overcome an incredible challenge. We’ve talked about the fact that
maybe adventure involves getting as close to death as possible in order to feel
truly alive. I think that this chapter is a perfect example of how a narrative
can be an adventure narrative without something actually going wrong. For me
this chapter was still an adventure narrative because while I was reading I
could feel the uncertainty and fear that the kayakers would have felt at the
POTENTIAL for something to go wrong. Adventure isn’t necessarily about
overcoming adversity. Maybe that closeness to death can be achieved just as
well through the possibility of adversity.
I found myself asking the same question, and although there are adventure aspects of this narrative, I would not consider it an adventure narrative because I did not feel like I experienced a change with the narrator by the end of the text. Cahill takes readers on a tour of his surroundings, but nothing profound happens. At the end I felt like I read about a really picture and wondered what to do with it. The narrative made me appreciate descriptions of nature and think about ways I might better appreciate my own surroundings.
ReplyDelete