31 pages • 1 hour read
Tod OlsonLost in the Pacific 1942
Nonfiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Notions of Heroism
Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker is viewed by the public as a heroic figure. Not only is he a war hero, but he is also a racecar driver and a successful businessman. He has even survived a plane crash in the past. Two of the biggest sources of his heroism are his strict code of behavior and his rigid ideals about manliness: “In his lifetime, the racetrack, the military, and the top ranks of the business world were mostly male territory. And to Rickenbacker, the important virtues—courage, determination, self-reliance—were male virtues” (103). However, the same strictness and inflexibility in Rickenbacker often causes his other stranded crewmembers to resent him and chafe under his command.
The public knows Rickenbacker from a distance, but the rest of the crew get to know him personally. To the crew, his heroic aura is often a form of tyranny. While Rickenbacker is good at establishing control and order—keeping the men focused and making sure that each crewmember gets an equal portion of the little food they find—he is unable to handle individual problems and rebellions. His initial reaction to Kaczmarczyk’s illness, which eventually kills him, is to write Kaczmarczyk off as a weakling. He also does not react well when the other crewmembers tell him that they want to cut the rope tying all of their rafts together and set off in separate directions. While Rickenbacker claims that a rescue plane will be able to spot their rafts more easily if they stay together, it is possible that the real reason he does not want the crew to separate is that he wants to retain control of them.
Rickenbacker’s idea of heroism is rooted in stoicism and self-sacrifice, while the other crewmembers believe that heroism means taking risks and striking out on their own. These different viewpoints about heroism contribute to the constant conflict between the crew and Rickenbacker, which helps to revive them in their weakened state. Rickenbacker’s antagonism, which is his form of heroism, helps to distract the crew from their thoughts of despair and hopelessness, and it even helps to keep them alive: “Rickenbacker growled at his raft mates until they wanted to survive, if for no other reason than to see him put in his grave” (125).
The Arbitrariness of Wartime Survival
Though the crew’s military training helps them to cooperate and work as a team, it breaks down whenever they are not forced to rely on it. Using knowledge from their training, the crew copes very well with a plane crash and then with being stranded in the Pacific Ocean for three weeks. With impressive speed, they find solutions for furnishing food and water, avoiding sharks, and accommodating sickness with few supplies. Though they often argue, they do not allow disagreements to prevent them from working as a team until the very end of their ordeal. In fact, they seem to operate better under the duress of disasters than during periods of relative calm. When they’re stranded at sea without a pressing issue to solve, the differences between the men emerge, and they stop functioning as a close unit. It is only during these lulls that members of the crew separate from the group to seek rescue on their own. This makes it difficult to determine the true role that their military training, especially their teamwork, plays in their rescue.
The men’s cooperation and teamwork may have helped them to survive, but their independence and roles as individuals ultimately seem to lead to their rescue. When a plane finally spots one of the crewmembers at sea, the men have already given up on being a team, and they have gone off in separate directions in their life rafts. Cherry, floating all alone in a tiny raft, is the first crewmember to be spotted from above. If he had not decided to separate from the rest of the crew and strike out on his own, he would have never been spotted by the plane that rescues him. It is also likely that none of the men would have been rescued if Rickenbacker had not been a celebrated war hero. Due to his prominence, Rickenbacker is given a top-secret mission that makes him invaluable to the United States military, which is why the military never stops searching for him.
Ultimately, the men’s rescue is caused by a mixture of chance and their characters. Though their story is inspiring, it is also an example of how arbitrary survival is during a war. It forces many Americans to wonder why the crew survived such a terrible ordeal while many of their loved ones, who received the same military training before serving in the war, did not: “In twenty-two days, seven men had survived on rafts in the Pacific. In that same twenty-two days, more than 2,000 Americans died in battle” (151-52).
The Gulf Between Military Life and Civilian Life
The story of the men’s plane crash and ordeal at sea is often interspersed with accounts of how these disasters are represented in United States newspapers. In these accounts, Rickenbacker’s disappearance and assumed death overshadow every other detail of the crew’s ordeal. In fact, the rest of the crewmembers’ disappearances are not reported at first because their flight was part of a top-secret mission and because they were not told about this mission until the last moment. This dearth of information allows Kaczmarczyk’s girlfriend, Snooks, to believe that her boyfriend is still alive after he dies of jaundice and dehydration at sea. She also believes he is alive because Kaczmarczyk wrote her letters a month before his top-secret mission, and they continue to arrive even after he has died. Scheduling letters to be sent long after they were composed—a form of communication that ultimately occludes more than it reveals—is an illustration of the separate customs practiced by civilians and military personnel.
The division between these customs is never more stark than when the crew contemplates the “Custom of the Sea” (82). This refers to cannibalism as a last resort for survival at sea. The crewmembers are not driven to this act, not even when Kaczmarczyk dies. However, the burial they give Kaczmarczyk at sea reminds them of the possibility of cannibalism and of the fine line that they must walk to survive—one that separates propriety from savagery and honor from ruthlessness. The crew hides this balancing act from their families back home to protect them and to keep themselves alive and sane.
