What theme is common to the two excerpts below?
1... . His theory of running until he reached camp
and the boys had one flaw in It: he lacked the endurance. Several times he stumbled, and
finally he tottered, crumpled up, and fell. When he tried to rise, falled. He must sit and rest, he decided, and next time he would merely
walk and keep on
going. As he sat and regained his breath, he noted that he was feeling quite warm and comfortable. He was not
shivering, and it even seemed that a warm glow had come to his
chest and trunk. And yet, when he touched his nose or cheeks, there was
no sensation. Running would not thaw them out. Nor would It thaw out his hands and feet. Then the thought came to him that the frozen
portions of his body must
extending. He tried to keep this thought down, to forget it, to think of something else; he was aware of the
panicky feeling that It caused, and he was afrald of the panic. But the thought asserted Itself, and persisted, until it produced a vision of his
body totally frozen.
(ack London, To Build a Fire) To
2. Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with the captaln clinging with one hand to the keel. He would have
appeared like, man ralsing himself to look over a board fence, if it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The
correspondent marvelled that the captain could still hold to it.
They passed on, nearer to shore-the oller, the cook, the captain-and following them went the water-jar, bouncing gayly over the
The correspondent remained ir the grip of this strange new enemy-a current. The shore, with Its white slope f sand and its green bluff,
topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture before him. It was very near to him then, but he was iImpressed as one who in a
gallery ooks at a scene from Brittany or Alglers.
He thought: am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?" Perhaps an individual must consider his own
death to be the final phenomenon of nature.'
Edmentum.
Yeah