Patricia Goldsby ENC 1102 June 28, 2009 Critical Analysis: The Perfect Storm

Sebastian Jungers The Perfect Storm, is a powerful illustration novel that uses time sequence and characterization elements of nonfiction prose in this terrifyingly dramatic story of a six member fishing vessel that left their port in Gloucester, Massachusetts in late October 1991 for their final haul in the North Atlantic. Little did they know that they would soon cross paths with one of the greatest storms ever recorded. This particular storm would create huge swells, high winds, and hard rain. The system was said to be a perfect storm because of all the elements were just right to create the worst imaginable storm ever seen, a hundred-year event, (191) as several meteorologists claimed. Junger has a kind of journalism-by-analogy to tell what probably happened on the Andrea Gail. Junger organizes his narrative around both spatial principles and time sequence. The spatial development takes the reader out of Gloucester onto the open sea and then the narrative attention ranges widely across the North Atlantic, encompassing the sword fishing fleet, the sailing yacht Sartori, Sable Island and important coastal points, and various freighters caught in a storm. In November of 1880, two fishermen named Lee and Devine rowed out from the schooner Deep Water in their dory. November was a hell of a time to be on the Grand Banks in any kind of vessel, and in a dory was sheer insanity. They took a wave broadside while hauling their trawl and both men were thrown into the water (30). The time sequence follows the last days of the Andrea Gail, but also goes back in time to the days of dory fishing of Georges Bank and literary and historical references from the nineteenth

century. He called attention to how difficult and dangerous offshore fishing can be. Junger writes New Englanders started catching swordfish in the early 1800s by harpooning them from small sailboats and hauling them on board (81). Junger also courageously interrupts both spatial and time sequence development with learned technical disquisitions of how waves form, how people drown and how boats turn over. The Perfect Storm follows the lives of the sword fishing crew of the Andrea Gail and their family members before and during the storm. Much of the beginning of the book gives a detailed description of the daily lives of the fishermen and what they do in their jobs, and is centered around activities that occurred at the Crows Nest, a tavern in Gloucester, popular with the fishermen. Like a good novel, The Perfect Storm returns to a series of general ideas evoked by the particular situations endured by its characters. The main theme might be summed up in the old clich, men against the sea, but Junger imbues this venerable idea with numerous contemporary relevancies. Primary is the aforementioned stress on the unchanging danger of fishing at sea and the unrecognized continuity between the days of sail, modern steel, and diesel technology. Junger puts himself in the place of the characters in the book, especially the men of the Andrea Gail. Whenever he can, he uses actual records of their conversations so that he can tell the reader exactly how much fish they caught, where they were on certain days, and other facts about the fishermen and their journey. Most of them are single kids with no better thing to do than spend a lot of dough, says Charles Reed, former captain of the boat. Theyre high rollers for a couple of days. Then they go back out to sea (15). However, he has to turn to accounts from other mariners that faced similar disasters to describe how his characters fight for survival on the Andrea Gail.

The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, was an account of an immense storm and its destructive path through the North Atlantic. Jungers illustration of time sequence and characterization is powerful and captures the truth and severity of off shore fishing and the consequences fishermen face when confronting Mother Natures wrath. Had someone survived off the Andrea Gail it would have been, in some ways, a much less interesting book. The reader, not to mention the author, wouldnt have learned much.

Works Cited

Junger, Sebastian. The Perfect Storm. New York: HarperTorch, 1997.