Entry 6: Watney's Perseverance

 Watney is an animal. I cannot fathom the way he goes through this crap and never really bats an eye. Examples anyone? Fine. First off, his Hab rips. What. The. HECK!!! THIS IS QUITE POSSIBLY THE WORST PATH THE BOOK COULD TAKE!!!! This is so bad and honestly to me insanely unexpected! Watney is sooooo lucky he was in an EVA and depressurizing the airlock as the Hab ripped. He seriously could have immediately died in the Martian atmosphere. Basically, he’s now even more homeless than he was, and he has to figure it out. “Turning his head to the side, he looked through the back door’s window. The collapsed Hab rippled in the distance, a junkyard of debris strewn across the landscape in front of it. Then, a hissing sound reached his ears. Listening carefully, he realized it was not coming from his suit. Somewhere in the phone booth-sized air-lock, a small breach was letting air escape.” (Weir 157) On top of that his faceplate is broken. And he reacts near to how I did, which makes sense. He has already endured so much and created so much good out of this desolation, then to have I almost all gone because of a stupid rip in canvas that was supposed to be well made and close to indestructible. But then he takes a step back and assesses. Then he does it again! He rebuilds and fixes everything. He started basically from scratch once again and was able to pull it off. Man, people in the book sometimes wonder what it must be like for him to be stranded and the toll it takes on his sanity. I don’t think it’s done anything to him. In fact, I think the extra stuff to do and the idea of surviving has given him purpose and helped him to become a bigger and better person. Even later in the book, Watney has to deal with additional trials. He is driving to the area where he will be picked up by the ARES crew, his rover flips and some things break and he has to clean up all the stuff that is thrown everywhere. He does the same thing once again. He fixes it. The book's theme is proven through these trials Watney is forced to endure. Perseverance. It’s a defining trait in life, and if we harness and keep it, we can do almost anything. Watney proves this, and Weir seems to want to convey this.

Credit for image: https://pixotale.com/story/2557344/


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