EXPEDITION OF JOE &SIMSON; To Fight or Give Up

The fight for life is sub-consciously ingrained in all of us from the time we were born. The one question we all ask ourselves from time to time is, should we keep fighting or should we give up. We all have the desire to live well and live long. Nothing can nor will ever happen to us. We view ourselves as invulnerable. However, the test of life is when that invulnerability is shaken. The majority of people will fight through any problems or challenges, while some would give up.

When faced with adversity and catastrophe, Joe chose to fight for his life against impossible odds. He seemed to do this in a form of a dare to himself. Regardless of the doubts, thoughts of giving up and the horrendous pain he must have been experiencing, that dare kept him going. During his struggles, I realized that the fight to survive is just that strong; that an ordinary person, such as Joe, can push through and defeat the odds he was against.

When Joe and Simon chose to climb the mountain, regardless of their lack of knowledge of what could happen, and lack of sufficient supplies, they dared something to happen. When Joe shattered his leg, and he and Simon, wordlessly, chose to work to get off the mountain as fast as they can, they were daring the odds that they both could make it. After the accident, in the crevasse, Joe dared the fates or odds yet again, when he chose to fight to survive and crawl the rest of the way down the mountain to base camp. I personally did not think it was possible for Joe to survive, but he proved me wrong.

Joe, regardless of thinking that saving himself was useless, was still determined to fight. He proved to be very stubborn in his efforts to keep moving despite the odds. He is true example of how the will to survive helps people fight past the pain, ignore the odds and turn a blind eye to all the doubts. The will to survive gives strength when there is weakness, hope when there seems to be no hope, and fight when fighting seems impossible.

In our ordinary life, daring the odds comes in different ways. Many people drink; do drugs; smoke cigarettes; and many more dangerous activities just because they can. We have a hard time believing that anything bad could happen to us. It is not reality to us until we are actually experiencing it. We may hear of other people getting cancer from smoking, or dying from an overdose of drugs, but we cannot draw a parallel with what happened to those people, to ourselves and what we are doing. We are in some way shortening our life by doing those things, yet we dare to do it anyway. For example, I will confess I am guilty of texting while driving. I have seen the videos and the Public Service Announcements (PSA) about what could happen when people text while driving and I even know someone who was in a horrible accident because they did it. However, my inner-self always seems to say, "Oh that won't happen to me", because I cannot bring myself to associate what happened to them to me. By texting while driving, despite the fact that it could hurt me or worse someone else, I am daring it to happen anyway.

There are many different reasons why a person chooses to do things. Maybe it is their way to fight the odds and say to the world, look at me, I am here and I am not going anywhere. We are, in short, daring something bad to happen to us, which could be a way of fighting the odds.

What we do in our lives on a daily basis, is not so different than what Joe and Simon did on their expedition. They made bad choices and mistakes and there were consequences. We make bad choices and mistakes and we also deal with the consequences. The trick is to learn from them and avoid them in the future. Giving up goes against our nature and is not an option; however, fighting the odds and not giving up is a trait we all will forever fight for.

I think this essay about the novel Touching the Void, but I'm not sure. In any event, this "introduction" says absolutely nothing about any novel.

Other issues:

---You have way too much fact and not nearly enough analysis here.
---You use a few words that simply don't belong in essays (at least not in upper-half essays).

Awesome Essay! I loved it! It was very interesting! I couldn't stop reading until the very end. The examples were very good.
But I do have a couple of suggestions:

- Who are Joe and Simon? When I first read this and saw the names, I was wondering who they were. maybe you could explain a bit more about them in the beginning.

- You can make your thesis a bit more clear. It was a bit confusing and I couldn't really figure out what your trying to say at first.

And one more question what is this essay for? school assignment?

Hope this helps! I think it was a great essay overall!