127 Hours by Aron Ralston

I'm going to be telling you all the things that you want to be able to analyze to write an amazing question [music] four slashquest five about this text. So, let's do this. With this question, one of the big things we want to be aware of because that is one of the big topics that the question four could be on or the question five could be on is what is the writer thinking and feeling? And in the case of 127 hours, we see our writer essentially go from A to B. We see them go from being really confident and seeing how experienced they are to the point when he becomes trapped at which point he becomes panicked and helpless and we see that change in what he is thinking and feeling. The first half of what my

analysis is going to focus on is how we can show that confidence and experience but then also later on in the text the panic and the helplessness too. The other thing that we need to consider is what our reader is thinking and feeling because another style of question that can commonly occur are exactly that the effect it's having on a reader. It won't necessarily mention the reader in the question but it will say something like look at how the text builds tension which of is of course the effect it's having on the reader. It's making the reader feel tension or look at how this text builds suspense. Typically you get both of these together. how it builds tension and suspense. And those are the

two key feelings with this text that our reader goes through. Now, I really want to clarify what the words tension and suspense mean and the distinction between them. And the reason for that is because tension is a classic word that students use all the time without really and suspense to be honest without really understanding what it is they're saying and the distinction and they end up sounding really generic. They're just like, "Oh, yeah, the writer is building tension when no tension is being built whatsoever." So, let's clarify what those words mean so we can actually use them purposefully. First of all, tension. Tension is a feeling of worry and anxiety which makes it difficult for you to relax. So, we're supposed to be

when we read 127 hours feeling worried and anxious for Aaron Rston. Suspense is a really similar but also slightly different concept. So suspense is a state of excitement or anxiety about something that's going to happen very soon. So the emotions of worry and anxiety the same. The little distinction is that with suspense something is coming and you can feel that something is coming. Whereas tension you don't necessarily need to be thinking something is coming to feel tension. That can just happen anyway. So the key question for us when we come to analyze 127 hours here is how does the writer make us feel that worry and anxiety and how do they also make us feel like something they're building up to

something. They're building up that worry and anxiety to a climax and something happening. So as I go through and analyze this text that is the second half of what I'm going to be looking at. It's going to be the confident tone and the tension and suspense. And as I do the analysis, you're going to be able to see in the top corner the terms confident, tone, intention, suspense, and the color coding for them. So you can see really visually how my analysis fits with the two different parts of what we want to consider. First thing I want to talk about with this opening of 127 hours in this first paragraph is how he immediately presents himself as being experienced like this was just another day for him. And he does that with the

determiners. Another and this. Now, explaining what a determiner is to a native English speaker is actually really hard to do. The technical meaning of determiner just when I I don't know, you can Google it and see what you think, but when I read it as a native speaker, I'm like, huh? But I'm going to try and explain it just very quickly. And basically they are words that help to specifically refer to something. Help clarify which one you're talking about. So for example, this one indicates it's not that one and not that one. It's this one. Another drop off indicates it's not the last drop off. It's not the same drop off. It is a new one. So yeah, the what understanding what a determiner is to be honest is not that important.

you're going to be able in your exam to just say the determiner. They're not expecting you to define it, but you do need to know that the determiners are another and this. And they are showing his experience because it's suggesting that he has been doing a lot of rock climbing. He's this is just one in a series of things that he has been climbing and hiking over. Another thing that indicates his experience and knowledge is the semantic field of measurements. Just look how many different measurements there are just in this first paragraph. It shows he's really thoughtful and insightful. He's really aware of his surroundings and thinking and considering deeply. And it shows his knowledge and appreciation for

the complexity, the consideration that needs to go into this kind of rock climbing. And that confidence continues into the next paragraph because you've got a semantic field of mountaineering. By mountaineering that's just like meaning the kind of rock climbing and hiking that he's doing. So there's lots of words to do with that activity. And the effect of this semantic field is again about making him seem really experienced and knowledgeable. He knows what he's talking about. And more than that he is astute. If you are astute that means that you have knowledge and skill and you're able to use it to your advantage. So in this case, he's able to use his knowledge of mountaineering and his experience with mountaineering to

help him manage this really tricky and difficult situation that he's in. So although he acknowledges that this is a difficult one, he also seems to still feel confident about his ability to handle it because he knows what it is he needs to do. And we see that more via the um first set of his thought process. So, of course, this is written in first person narrative viewpoint, which means it does give us an internal narrative viewpoint on him, but Aaron Rston doesn't use the internal narrative viewpoint the whole way through. The feelings and thought processes only actually appear in really specific points. And so, there's definitely something for us to analyze there. And one of the first, well, the first time

we get his internal viewpoint is in this third paragraph. If I can step onto it, then I'll have a 9 ft height to descend. Less than that the first overhang. I'll dangle off the chalk stone, then take a short fall onto the rounded rocks piled on the canyon floor. So, up to this point, he's been describing his surroundings, and he's been talking about things he's been able to do in the past. Now, he's thinking through his process of what he's going to do in this situation. That white gap is really bugging me. And this thinking it through again is combining also still with the semantic field of measurements and the semantic field of mountaineering. There's still a lot of mountaineering and measurement language in this bit. It

really shows his confidence and assuredness in what he's doing. He feels really certain about what he's doing. But at the same time there is an element of risktaking and that is really conveyed by the conjunction of if. Now I would say I am going to talk more about tension and suspense in a second but I would say that this thought process and that conjunction is part of building the tension and suspense because of course if is like a possibility. If you can do this then this will happen. So it's showing an awareness on his part of the risk he's taking because if he can't step out onto it if he can't manage this then it could go wrong. there's an element of possibility of things going wrong there. And that's part of how it

builds up tension and suspense over that question of will his if go the way that he wants it to or not. If we go back up to the top of this extract again then and start thinking about more of how he builds that tension and suspense back in that first paragraph alongside the determiners and the semantic field of measurements that really show and the semantic field of mountaineering as well that really show his confidence and his experience. At the same time there is also a semantic field of constriction and that semantic field of constriction is in the description of the setting itself. All of these different words, wedged, claustrophobic, short tunnel, slot, narrows, they create such a sense

of the tightness of his environment. And that is of course building a sense of tension and suspense for us because we can interpret how uncomfortable and risky this situation is. The writer also really enhances that feeling of the constriction and the tightness that he's moving through with the use of sibilance. You can see it here in the repeated S sounds. Stem my body across the slot. We've got all of these S sounds. Impossible. Stem. Forgot that one. Across the slot. Lots of S's really close together. And it works like sensory imagery. Acting like an oral representation of him trying to move his way through. Now, one thing to note, when I verbally say oral to you, I don't mean o r a l as in

things you do with your mouth. I mean a u r a l as in listening and sound. So, it creates an oral representation of him trying to move his way through this really tight space. And so, we feel even though he's confident and experienced, we feel tension because we ultimately still know what a dangerous situation he is in. And of course, the writer is deliberately making us feel that way. The writer is deliberately making us aware of the danger he's in because it is foreshadowing the danger he will be in shortly. He is going to be in danger. He is going to face actual danger very very soon. And so the writer is trying to create a little bit of foroding around all of this where the confident experienced tone of our writer is

juxtaposed against the foroding ominous danger of the area that he is in. And if we were in any doubt about that danger, if we hadn't spotted it because of the semantic field of constriction or the sensory imagery or the conjunction of if, the analogies make sure we really understand it because the analogies he uses are really relatable. And he uses a lot of them across these paragraphs. You've got refrigerator, short tunnel. I've circled that one because I've already highlighted it dark green. So if I put the red over the top, it like blacks it out. Pole. climb up the inside of the chimney and the size of a large bus tire. All of these comparisons are really relatable for us as the audience.

We can visualize refrigerator. We can visualize large bus tire. And so what it helps us to do is again to understand the level of danger. A rock the size of a fridge, we understand that's a pretty darn big rock. a rock the size of a large bus tire. We understand that weight, that scale. Trying to climb up the inside of a chimney, we understand that challenge and that difficulty. So, all of the analogies have the exact same impact of helping us to understand the level of danger that he is potentially in. Another thing that creates that feeling of how tight the space is is the tricolon, hands, feet, and back. If we think about how varied those different parts of the body are, what it makes us appreciate is how he is surrounded. This

environment is completely covering him and it is taking every single part of his body in order to manage to move his way through it. So, it reinforces the tightness of the space. It reinforces the vulnerability of his situation. If you can't afford to have your hands or your feet or your back lose contact, that's a danger right there. And then of course through all of this, you've got the fact that this is written in present tense and it's told in chronological order. So in terms of creating that tension and suspense for us as an audience, that present tense and chronological order is all about making us experience it in the immediacy of the moment. As it happens to him, it happens for us. I think this was a really

important thing for the writer because of course this is non-fiction and the events have already happened and the odds are that the audience knows what's happened to him and that's at least part of why they've chosen to read his book. they're interested in how he got into this situation and and what he ended up doing to get himself out alive. And so, in a way, the ending has already been spoiled for our audience, right? Because the likelihood is they are familiar with the situation already. And so, for our writer, it's well, how do I reingject the tension and suspense even though they know what's coming? And so he does that with the present tense and the chronological by making us wait, making

us go through the process with him, making us go through the timeline with him and by putting it in present tense, removing that um security offered by the past tense where if you're writing in past tense, you've been through it and you've gotten through it. No, this is all written in the present tense where everything is still very much possible and changing. And indeed, in that sense, the knowledge an audience may already have before they've read the book because they might already be familiar with his situation, that is part of where the suspense is coming from. That's part of why the foreshadowing is possible because we know it's going to go wrong. We're just waiting for when it's going to go wrong and why it's

going to go wrong. We're into our next chunk now and this is where we're going to see that change from the confident in experience to the panic and helpless as the actual accident happens. We do start off with the continuation of techniques we've already seen. So the semantic field of mountaineering that makes him seem really experienced and astute. We do have that in this opening paragraph still as he tries to make his way through this canyon. And we do still have the building of tension and suspense because we've got a lexical field of dynamic verbs and a semantic field of body parts that really creates the high energy of his movement and what he is doing, how much skill it is taking for him to move around. So let's look at

the words that are contributing to both that semantic field of mountaineering and the semantic field of body parts and that lexical field of dynamic verbs. Do you see how much there is? There is so much packed into this paragraph and it's really about making it feel yes exciting because he's moving through and he's doing the actual act of mountaineering but also quite tense because it seems so high energy and so difficult. There's also a really nice bit of foreshadowing again here where we have the use of the word teeters slightly. So if something teeters, that means it's moving because it's unstable. So that is immediately heightening the tension for our audience because we're like, "Oh, the rocks

moving. That's not good." And of course, it's foreshadowing what's going to happen in a little bit. But that adverb slightly, it makes it feel quite small. So there is a little bit of risk going on, but it's still quite small risk at this point. You've again also got our writer using analogies, this time akin to climbing down from the roof of a house. We can all understand that image and how dangerous it can be to climb down from the roof of a house. The personification in the rock in in the opening sentence of the second paragraph is also really interesting as well. The way that he talks about that stone makes it almost feel like he's waking a beast. Just look at the language he uses to describe it. I feel the stone respond to

my adjusting grip with a scraping quake as my body's weight applies enough talk to disturb it from its position. Now, you in your essays can't say that he is describing it like a waking beast because that would be you being metaphorical and you are not allowed to be metaphorical in your exams. The writer gets to be metaphorical. You don't. You have to be explicit and literal in how you explain yourself. So, if we were being explicit and literal, what this personification is doing is making it feel like the writer has a relationship with the environment around him. And that relationship is shifting from him being in control of it. As we've had before, his foot has been tight against it. Things have been

wedged. Things have been gripped. the focus, the verbs have been on him and his actions against the environment. Whereas what we're having here now is a shift to it's the environment and their verbs in reaction to his movements. There is an unsettling a shifting in the relationship as he is about to lose that control and power that he has in this situation. And that's also represented in that image of the scraping quake. That sensory imagery again that alongside the other techniques we've talked about like that present tense and that chron chronological order are all part of really making us feel like we are experiencing the environment changing around him in the moment. Because of course scraping is the sound

and quake is the movement. And so the sound and the movement of the things he is feeling with his body as he is there adjusting his grip and so on and so forth. So it's that real building of tension by making us experience it through his senses. We then have, and I realize I accidentally re uh revealed this information way too early, so I'm sorry if that confused you before, but we then have another use of the internal narrative viewpoint where he says instantly, I knew I know this is trouble. We already have had established for us that he is really experienced. He knows what he's doing when it comes to mountaineering. So if he thinks he's in trouble, then it really confirms our concerns now. And it's again that

tension really heightening and we're starting to shift away from suspense now and more into the tension rather than the suspense because of course now the thing that the suspense has built been building up for it's happening. So the suspense is perhaps I would argue maybe at its peak point here because the event is about to happen. we know that something bad is about to happen and he has really confirmed it for us in this moment. So now it's going to shift more away from the suspense and more into the tension because it's less about is it going to happen and it's more about our worry and anxiety of it happening actually in the moment. The other thing that really quickly heightens that feeling of, oh yeah, he's in trouble and

begins our shift to his panicked and helpless tone is the adverb instinctively. When you think about what he was like in the last paragraphs we've looked at, where all those different semantic feels really conveyed his experience, how much he thinks things through, how much he considers instinctive. you're not thinking things through anymore. You're just acting without thought. And so that immediately conveys the first set of panic because of the fact that he has stopped thinking things through. He also starts to personify his emotions. And I think this is part of creating not just the panic because they're quite explicit on the panic, but also the helplessness. Because if you're personifying your

emotions, it's like your emotions are separate from yourself and it's something out of your control. So, it's like he's helpless to all of these panicked emotions that are overtaking him. Let's have a look at some of the examples. Fear shoots my hands over my head. It's like his emotions are making him behave in a certain way, not his logic anymore. My reactions decelerate. He can feel himself not reacting as fast as he needs to. But again, there's a feeling of him being helpless to do anything about it. I've just realized, by the way, I missed out one of the quotes on the personification of a rock. So, I'm very quickly going to backtrack and talk about that. And that is, the backlit chalk stone falling toward my

head consumes the sky. Now, that metaphor, that personification of the rock consuming the sky really conveys its power and strength as it is coming towards him. Because of course we can think of the sky as being all reaching and huge and it's managing to get rid of all of that. Of course on a literal level what what's happening is that the rock is falling down from above him down the canyon and it's blocking out that light. But the way it's described as consuming it, it's that real aggressive power that the rock has as it's coming down towards him. Going back though to the panicked and helpless tone as well as the personification of emotions, we also have the metaphor of time dilates. And dilates means that something's

getting like bigger. So he's essentially saying time is is slowing down because it's like time is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's widening and slowing down around him. And this metaphor, in fact, this entire opening of the paragraph is about stressing how time is really slowing down. And of course that really juxtaposes against the speed that we had of the chalk stone earlier and you know is falling towards his head and consuming the sky. And so this sudden change in time is again part of throwing us into the immediacy of how he experienced it. So he is slowing down the writing just as time slowed down for him. So we can see all the little details of everything that happens. So while the pace does actually feel really

fast in some ways, as I'm going to talk about in a second, it is also the reason it's in so much long sentence detail is about replicating that feeling of the slow motion of what he's been going through. And throughout this third paragraph here, I mean technically this is like paragraph six in the whole thing, but on this slide it's the third paragraph. We again have a lexical field of dynamic verbs, but this time they're all about conoting violence and pain through what he is going through. Smashes, yank, crushes, tearing. And so in many ways, this third paragraph is almost like a mirror image, a direct opposite contrast to the first paragraph on this slide and also paragraphs we've seen on the previous

slide because it uses a lot of the similar techniques. So it's got that lexical field of dynamic verbs, but this time is all about conoting violence and pain, whereas in the past it's been about conoting that control and high energy that he has. It also has a really fast pace like we've seen with the earlier paragraphs as well. Part of in the past creating the high energy and his activity this time about how fast everything is happening to him, how helpless he is to stop any of it, which is of course building tension for us as we read it because we feel that overwhelming sense of how he is losing control so so quickly. And we get that pace as well from the really long sentences in this paragraph. But how

that is then contrasted right at the very end with that fragment. Now a fragment also known as a minor sentence is an incomplete sentence. Usually really short then silence. That's the fragment here. And so our tension is built with this really really fast pace of this happening, this happening, this happening, this happening, this happening and then silence. and it suddenly and sharply cuts that pace to nothing. Again, reflecting what happened to him. It's creating that sensory feel for us of how quickly everything went from 100 to zero. We've also got again that semantic field of body parts. We've got the left hand, the eyes, the left arm, the right hand, the right arm, the wrist, the palm, the thumb up, fingers

extended. It's it's been expanded now with that asytic listing of all the different body parts. But what's happening this time is those body parts are being destroyed basically in various different ways. The right hand is being crushed, the right arm is being ins snared, the left hand is being smashed, the wrist, palm in, thumb up, fingers extended. That's really stretching out how all of his different body parts are being affected by this rock. And so this time, the semantic field of body parts is all about helping us really see every little bit. Oh, and of course, sorry, let's not forget the tearing the skin off the lateral side of his forearm. This time our asytic listing and our semantic field of body parts is all

about conveying how injured he is becoming by this accident which of course is increasing tension for us as the reader because we're like, "Oh, damn. All of these different body parts of his are being absolutely crushed." And of course, we know because of things that have already been said. We know how important his hands are. Remember that tricolon before of hands, feet, and back? Now we've got those hands being absolutely destroyed. And so that asytic listing of really stressing how much his hand has been entrapped and crushed is an important part of conveying that helplessness because we had it foregrounded to us earlier how important his hands, back, and feet were to him being able to successfully maneuver

around. We're on to the final chunk of this extract. Now, we're now basically just looking at tension and the panicked and helpless tone. The confidence is completely gone. I wouldn't say there's really any suspense anymore because the big moment has now happened. In terms of our panicked, helpless tone, the first thing we want to analyze is that continued personification of his emotions and his pain. His disbelief paralyzes him temporarily. His nervous systems pain response overcomes the initial shock. The flaring agony throws him into a panic. His mind commands his body. Anxiety as his brain tweaking. His desperate brain is conjuring up images. His body's chemicals are raging at full flood. So many different personification

and metaphors all about the different parts of the body trying to gain back some kind of control and failing to in some way. So there is again as I've already said there is that feeling of him being helpless because there is a disconnect between him and his body and his mind and also because of how the different versions of the personification all suggest that him being overwhelmed by the pain and panic that he's experiencing. And of course structurally we can analyze how all of that personification completely contrasts to the earlier energy that he had. If you think about it, in the earlier sections of the text, when he was really in control, the language was very literal and very specific and technical. It was

all measurements and mountaineering and numbers and all of that. Now, as he's lost control and he's becoming panicked and helpless, everything is much more metaphorical because he's struggling to process it. He's not in control anymore of everything that's going on and everything that's happening to him. You also have this really interesting use of the dynamic verb vanishing. Of course, vanishing might make us think of something like a magic trick. So, it has these connotations of mystery about it, like, "Oh, where's my arm gone?" But of course, that is also a huge contrast to the earlier knowledge and experience that he had. Before it was all about his knowledge and experience. If I do this,

this will happen. I'm going to slide through here. I'm going to chimney up there. It's all good. Now there is things vanishing connoting mystery. There's the adverb of implausibly as if things make no sense. There's a lack of understanding. There's not really being able to make sense of what's happened to him anymore. So again, that's another contrast and how he has changed at this end of the text compared to the beginning. And by the way, when it comes to analyzing this text from a structural standpoint, this is the big thing you want to be doing is contrasting how his emotional state has changed from the beginning to the end of the extract. We again get our internal narrative viewpoint and it's all about showing the

shock to his system. Good God, my hand is really quite emotive created by the use of that I was going to say taboo language, but do people see good God as a swear word anymore? I'm not sure. It maybe gets seen as a if it is, it's like the mildest of mildest swear words, but for sure there's this real shock and worry being conveyed in that internal narrative viewpoint, specifically with what's happened to his hand, but also attention for us thinking, "Oh my god, what has happened to his hand?" Of course, we know that it's stuck. We had that very specific description before of the wrist and the extended fingers and the thumb in, but there's still that tension of man, what what has happened to him? How is he going to get out of

this? And the more shock and panic we see him feel, the more tension that builds for us because we have had it foregrounded how experienced he is. So if he is panicking, we must surely really be panicking for him and seeing how desperate a situation this is. In addition to all of that personification of emotions and pain, we get more of the panicked and helpless tone in this opening paragraph from the alliteration and animal imagery in grimace and growl. For me, the alliteration and the grimace and growl, considering that what he's doing is trying to shift his hand and move his way out of this situation, I feel like I can almost feel him twisting and turning because of that grimace growl like twist turn kind of feeling to

it. It also of course is more of that sensory language creating grimace with the facial expressions what we can see growl with the sound and it's part of building the tension as well with creating that immediacy of us being there and really sensing what he senses and of course both grimace and growl cannote at the pain and the struggle of him trying to get himself out and deal with this situation. You then have the use of direct speech in the get your hand out of there where his mind is commanding his body. So we've already mentioned the effect of that personification of his mo emotions. But the direct speech plus the use of exclamatory sentence. So that's the fact that it has an exclamation mark on it

conotes that desperation but also helplessness as he says that he yanks his arms three times in a naive attempt to pull it out. So, he's not just helpless because his mind and body are two separate things and they're having to try and communicate and struggling to communicate, creating that helplessness, but also that word naive, that adjective is so important in showing his own awareness of his helplessness. Just as we've said, I feel like I'm saying this over and over again, but you know, he keeps using the same techniques that he we know he is experienced and knowledgeable. So, if he is describing it as a naive attempt, he also is showing a self-awareness that this isn't going to work. He is aware of his own

helplessness. And if he knows he's helpless, say it with me, what does that do to our audience? heightens their awareness of how helpless he really must be because he knows what he's talking about. So we are like dang okay this is a bad situation. You know how before I said about how his arm vanishing is almost like magic imagery and conoting that mystery. He does it again in that personification of his brain. My desperate brain conjures up a story more of that magical imagery there. And I think this is similar to what I was saying before about how we're suddenly seeing so much more metaphorical language now that the accident has happened because it's like it doesn't feel real. The magical imagery is part of creating that

dreamlike fantasy craziness to it of is this really happening to me? It also makes our brain his brain feel a lot less certain and confident than it was before. There is another contrast there. Again, if you think about how sure he was, about how knowledgeable he was before, how certain he was, now he's having to conjure things. He's having to make stuff up in order to get himself through. So, that's another change there of needing to rely on fiction rather than his concrete knowledge in order to I think be okay is a bit of a stretch here considering the situation he's in. But he does himself say that it's like it's his only chance. This is his brain thinking up, trying to process how the hell he's going to get out of this. And

the story is how his brain is doing that. It's the connection his brain is making of, well, if a mother lifts a baby, can lift a car off a baby, you're going to have to do the same to get yourself out of this situation. And in both of these paragraphs, we essentially see an attempt at trying to get himself out, followed by a short sentence that clarifies his failure to do so. But I'm stuck nothing. I'm going to talk more about the nothing in a minute when I more reach the end of that paragraph. However, I want to talk a little bit about the but I'm stuck. There's a real certainty and finality to the tone of that short sentence. There's nothing he can do. is just acknowledging and admitting that situation. And so on the

one hand, there's tension for us as the reader because we're like, "Oh no, he's stuck. How is he going to get out of this?" But then also, it's part of that helplessness as well. The simplicity of that short sentence combining with the fact that it is also a declarative sentence is really just like there's nothing I can do. That's it. Of course, another thing that conveys the panic that he's going through is that ellipsis. Ellipsis is the name for the three dots. They're a big part of again creating that sensory imagery as if we're there with him because they convey the hesitation in the moment. It combines with that present tense to create the real pauses in his processing. It's also linked to what I

was saying before about how he's not thinking things through as much anymore because the ellipses basically represent moments where he's quite literally not thinking. They're like blanks. his mind going blank, if you will, for a moment. All of his knowledge and experience is just gone and now he's in a world of just trying to behave as he said it instinctively. Another part of that is the italics as well in right now because it's part of creating that stress in the moment, his awareness of the immediacy and urgency of the time and the moment. So, it's the italics plus the ellipses plus the present tense that are all creating that feeling of us working through this with him. And that's of course building tension for us because

we can see how he's struggling to figure out a way out of this, but also he's aware of the urgency of his situation and how quickly he needs to act too. So, throughout this section, there's a really powerful juxiposition between his own self-awareness and his helplessness. We have many of the sort of echoes and similarities to his previous style back when he was confident in experience. The semantic fields of body parts and measurements, the lexical fields of dynamic verbs. Little bit of mountaineering language in here as well with things like getting good leverage. And what that is doing for us as the reader is building hope within that tension of, oh, can he do it? He's figuring out he knows what he needs to

do. He knows his best chance is to free himself with force. We get those longer sentences again building up the pace like they did before. Is he getting back some of his energy? Is it all going to be fine? You got the direct speech with the exclamatory sentence of come on, move, showing his frustration, his determination to keep pushing and get himself out of this. And then all of that is brought to a crash with that fragment of nothing. Very similar to what he did before. He builds up the potential, the hope, the momentum, the pace, and then brings it crashing back down, cuts it straight off just with a fragment of nothing. And so the way that it ends, the tone right at the very end because of that fragment is just that

helplessness. All of his knowledge, all of his self-awareness, all of his experience in that moment has failed him. He truly cannot get out. 127 hours is not the only text that could come up in the English language exam. So, make sure you have a look at my other videos for the other anthology texts [music] so that you are as prepared as you possibly can be to get yourself that grade nine and absolutely smash your English language GCSE. See?