By Lynnette M. Booker
Sebastian Junger’s Perfect Storm is about the disappearance of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing boat, during its route through the Grand Banks of the Atlantic Ocean. While on its return voyage to Gloucester, Massachusetts, the Andrea Gail was caught between three storms (Hurricane Grace, Stable Island Storm, and Canadian High), which is known as the Perfect Storm by meteorologist. This monstrous storm caused the mysterious death of all six crew members employed on the Andrea Gail and the curious disappearance of the boat itself—only leaving oil barrels as dead-end clues. This is possibly the reason Junger devotes an immense amount of coverage to the Andrea Gail and the characters associated with the fishing boat compared to the other two storylines presented in the book. The other two storylines are the Satori rescue and the Air National Guard Pararescue Jumper (PJ), which happen to have the most thrilling action compared to the Andrea Gail’s storyline.
However, the three storylines do not intersect; they are separate events that all occur during the perfect storm, around the same days the Andrea Gail last had radio contact (October 30th at 6 p.m.).Unlike the Andrea Gail there are survivors from the Satori rescue and the crash of the PJs’ helicopter (during a rescue mission). These storylines show the sea’s condition that the Andrea Gail also experienced. In other words, the details recalled from the Satori and PJ survivors’ experience gives life to the Andrea Gail’s storyline. Since the fate of the Andrea Gail is built on speculation, that is why the immense coverage of background and history circling the Andrea Gail is necessary.
Junger writes from a journalistic point of view, delivering the story not through the characters, but in the form of an expository essay. Junger writes with an assumption that the reader has little to no background knowledge on the subculture of commercial fishing. The exposition element of the book is vital to the Andrea Gail’s storyline because there were no survivors to tell their experience at sea. Since there was no direct evidence to the disappearance of the boat and the death of six crew members, Junger created hypothetical suppositions based on other fishermen’s experiences with monstrous storms and people who had direct contact with them days before the storms hit the Grand Banks of the Atlantic Ocean.
In all, there are many dangers with writing about an event with no eye witnesses or direct evidence—one, it could be unethical and two, the facts could be misconstrued. Yet despite these challenges, Junger was able to circumvent these two issues by never declaring that this is what happened, but instead illustrating the possibility through the perfect storm survivors and survivors of other storms. In addition, Junger had direct contact with the crew members’ families, friends, and past employers and employees on other boats; this gave clues to how Billy Tyne, the captain of the Andrea Gail, possibly handled the stressful circumstances of the storm. Not only were these people able to provide the behavior and characteristics of each crew member, but also to secondary characters, such as Bob Brown, the owner of the Andrea Gail. Perhaps this raises the question of whether the events and characters received a fair representation. In my opinion, based on the text, I believe all characters seem to be portrayed through the eyes of the people Junger interviewed, not his own assumptions. Therefore the characters and events in the book received the best representation or approximation from the information gleaned from interviewees.
Vivacity to Blog 