The White Darkness
Written by Geraldine McCaughrean
(Sakurakitty's idol)
I just read a book called The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. I don't really care for the storyline. Young girl obsessed about the Antartica was brought to the Pole with her crazy uncle who believes there's a hole that leads to the middle of the earth and other worlds inside like a Russian dol on top of each other so he tries to find the hole to communicate with the aliens and kills people and hijacks a plane and then she finds out about how he killed her father and has to kill him and etc...It sounds real familar like another story I've read, as though the two authors challenged each other to write about a girl and a crazy uncle and somewhere cold and something supernatural. In the other story it was a yeti, but in this one its the girl's imaginary friend, who saved her by forcing her to keep living even when she said she wanted to die. Well, that more or less the only thing I REALLY like about the book, otherwise I wouldn't have spent all that time reading it. You see, the uncle was slowly poisoning the girl's dad and feeding her all kinds of books and videos about the Pole. On the day her father died, the girl watched a video about these explorers who tried to conquest the Pole, but found someone was faster than them. Dejected, they turned back but ran straight into a ginormous storm. One of them died and another was crippled in all four limbs, but the other three wouldn't let him go. Finally, on his 32nd birthday, March 16, he woke up and crawled out of the tent, teling his friends, "I am just going outside and I may be some time." Then he fell into the middle of the blizzard and died, so that he wouldn't weigh down his friends. His friends died soon after anyways, just 11 miles away from a food store. And while rescuers found their bodies, they never found his. That man's name is Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, though some of his friends call him "Titus" (so does the girl in the story). And get this, HE REALLY EXISTED. He has a whole museum dedicated to him. In the story, the girl was lost and alone after her uncle died (fell into the Hole...long story), with only Titus (well, her imagination of him anyway) by her side. Once she reached the place he allegedly died and wanted to sink into the ice and be buried with him. But he screamed in her mind that the ice was forever changing and that his body was no longer there, having fallen into the sea and devoured by sea-lions and whatnot. But the thing is, he's just her imagination right? Whatever he knows is just what she's read about him. BUT SHE DID NOT KNOW THAT HIS BODY WAS GONE. Of course, that part was just part of the story (but I cried anyway). But what he did before he died is real. And I've half a mind to use his quote--"I may be some time". Only people who don't know his story won't know what it means. So here, I'm giving you all I know. Did I ever tell you how much I respected 诸葛亮? Now I admire Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates just as much. Rest in peace, both of you.
Favourite Qoutes-"I am just going outside and I may be some time."-Captain Lawrence Edward Grace "Titus" Oates, to his fellow Antartica explorers before he crawled (he could no longer use both arms and legs) out of the tent to his own death instead of being a liablity to his comrades. His body was never found.
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