Essay: “The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica” by Henry Worsley

02/22/2018
Reading Journal 3
In the article “The White Darkness: A Journey Across Antarctica” from the New Yorker, the Antarctica explorer Henry Worsley showcased virtues that the current society considered as “masculine”, and how his family background which pushed him to become who he is. During his journey, Worsley exemplified virtues such as ambitious, willing to take risks, and assertive.
In the beginning of the article, Worsley explained that his primary purpose for the Antarctica trip was “hoping to achieve what his hero, Ernest Shackleton, had failed to do a century earlier: to trek on foot from one side of the continent to the other.” Even though this trip consisted more than a thousand miles of walking and one of the most brutal environments in the world, he knew that achieving the South Pole would make him one step closer to becoming, and potentially being a greater hero than his idol. This was a trip that nobody had attempted to go on without the assistance of dogs or a sail, and the man had no food cashes deposited along the route to help him forestall starvation. Once he successfully completed the trip, he had made his mark in human history.
Before the idea of traveling across the Antarctica crossed his mind, Worsley had already accomplished many remarkable honors, and many of them exemplified his masculinity. He was “a retired British Army officer who had served in the Special Air Service, a renowned commando unit… a sculptor, a fierce boxer, a photographer who meticulously documented his travels, a horticulturalist, a collector of rare books and maps and fossils.” Out of all these various interests he had, him being an amateur historian eventually led him to learn about Shackleton and his journey. Worsley had discovered his interest in exploring the wilderness by age thirteen. Even though other kids at school all perceived him as their leader and wanted to hang out with him, he would rather wander by himself and hunt for birds’ nests, track their location and observe them. As he read about Shackleton’s journey, he knew that going on this trip would fulfill this part of him.
Though the goal of reaching the South Pole was risky, couple of Worsley’s family members showed him how to be tough and be up for challenges. His father fought during the Second World War and had risen to the highest ranks of the British Army. He never showed his tender side in front of Worsley, and the only physical contact they had when they saw each other was shaking each other’s hand. From his father, Wrosley learned the seriousness in being a soldier and a man. Another relative that gave him the confidence to go on this trip was a man named Frank Worsley, who was a trusted member of one of Shackleton’s expeditions and also one of his distant relatives. The family connection with his hero made Worsley felt much more connected with Sahckleton, also gave him the ambition and confidence to complete this goal.
Henry Worsley had three other companions during his trip, but he was the only person who demonstrated leadership skills as well as his assertiveness on making difficult decisions. One of his companions, Jameson Boyd Adams recalled: “Henry had a calm authority. He made crisp decisions. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong. You just didn’t know, because you were walking through a maze. But he would make those decisions, having listened and consulted with us, so it made it very easy to follow him.”  When the team had an argument over the route they were taking, Worsley assertively provided directions before the dissension led to a misguided route. When it seemed like their trip was not able to stay on schedule because they were so beaten by the horrifying environment, he suggested the crew to go on. Even during the toughest times, Henry Worsley, as Adams evaluated, “relied on force of mind”. When the crew finally reached their destination to the North Pole, “Worsley planted a British flag and arranged a group photograph similar to one that Shackleton had taken with his party. Adams was on the left, as his great-grandfather had been; Gow was in the middle; and Worsley stood on the right, in Shackleton’s place.” At this point, his dream of becoming Shackleton has finally came true and he has exemplified masculinity through all the hardships he had gone through.
To Henry Worsley, the completion of this trip gave him a new understanding of what he is capable of doing as a human being. He returned to Antarctica soon after his first success, and the reason was found in one of the quotes he wrote down in his commonplace book, from the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen: “A victory of human mind and human strength over the dominion and powers of Nature; a deed that lifts us above the great monotony of daily life; a view over shining plains, with lofty mountains against the cold blue sky, and lands covered by ice-sheets of inconceivable extent . . . the triumph of the living over the stiffened realm of death.” His victory on reaching the South Pole was his own version of overpowering Nature, and making it out alive made his trip the triumph of the living over the many deaths in Antarctica.