Monday, 25 April 2011

Chapter 5: The Barrel of the Gun - Part 2

     Billy's ship continues into the storm and the waves are now up to 70 feet tall, accompanied by winds up to 115 miles/hour. Sidetracking from the current storm , the author tells the story of Murph, one of the crew members aboard the Andrea Gail. Sebastian Junger shares numerous stories of near-death experiences that Murph faced in his life and explained that he was either close to dying or hard to kill. Then the author returns to the story of Hurricane Grace and its reckless nature. The hurricane caused great damage to a boat that is enormous compared to the Andrea Gail and even made the boat change its course. The strength of the storm is clearly shown in this situation and all of this raw power is being exerted on the Andrea Gail. Lastly, the Andrea Gail can no longer communicate with fellow ships because the storm took out the electronics on the ship and for the first time, the Andrea Gail is completely alone.

     The second half of this chapter did an excellent job of showing the progression of the storm and the havoc that is creating in its path. Also, the basic need of being able to communicate with people and create friendships is related to this chapter. In the story, it stresses that now that the Andrea Gail cannot communicate with other vessels, it will be more difficult to survive the storm. This is because the weather updates from other ships are taken away from the crew of the Andrea Gail and this leaves them without any warning of future obstacles that the storm might throw their way.

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