We had reached the naked soul of man.

South was the most serious book I read. I don’t mean it was the first “big boy” or “historical non-fiction” book I have ever read. Instead, it was the most dire book I had ever read— containing the cleanest account of exploration, degradation, and jubilation.

One night, about last October, I was thinking hard about Antarctica. Maybe I had come across a Reddit post or was lying, trying to fall asleep, thinking of that least visited continent on Earth. I sometimes forget it’s not just ice. It is a whole damn rock mass above the ocean… covered in ice. I went online and somehow stumbled upon South. I wanted to read a first-hand account of what it was like for early explorers to venture into the unknown while living in a modernized world.

I had not known much about the epic that Ernest Shackelton endured in the Antarctic along with his men. I was instantly sold, and so was the eBay listing that I found selling a cheap copy of the book, thanks to my terrible money-spending tendencies. I received the book, flipped through some pages, and saw how boring it was. I set this idea beside and behind me and started to read. Wide-eyed, I was excited to start my first non-fiction adventure book, especially after I had been so interested in the topic itself just a few nights before. “I will carry through this,” I told myself, knowing that I had abandoned many books that hadn’t kept my interest.

I didn’t want another unfinished project (it would be ironic if I never finished this essay). But, to my delight, finishing South has been one of my most proud accomplishments recently. It took me to finish this book from November 2023 till Saturday, July 14th, 2024. My main excuse was that I only read it at work. I got a 30-minute break every day, so I told myself to read more on break and not scroll on my phone, wasting relaxation and collecting screen time. That worked maybe 25% of the time. I chipped away at the book, slowly but surely getting to the 100-page mark by Christmas. A trip home and a back-to-work shock later, I fell off of the routine. For the next several months I would read once per week or so, sometimes skipping a week. Eventually, I found more time in the slower months to read on the job. In just a few good reading days, I probably read the last half of the book. I had covered more ground in 3 days than I had over the last 7 months of reading.

How I usually explain what I am reading to coworkers is like this:

It’s the most boring yet most entertaining book I have ever read. Imagine a book about the most mundane details of an Antarctic expedition: the weather, depth measurements, ration portions, and being plain miserable. But in between those parts, out of nowhere, you come across some of the most beautiful and emotional writing I have ever read.

One of my two physical notations in the book comes from the earlier, more optimistic, sections about wildlife on the Antarctic ice.

Several young emperor penguins had been captured and brought aboard on the previous day. Two of them were still alive when the Endurance was brought alongside the floe. They promptly hopped on to the ice, turned round, bowed gracefully three times, and retired to the far side of the floe. There is something curiously human about the manners and movements of these birds.

I found it sort of cute and hilarious that Shackleton and his crew imprisoned some penguins, and released them, after murdering their brethren, proceeded to waddle onto the ice, turn around, and then bow to the humans. It’s quite a unique interaction. We may see penguins in the zoo, and plenty of penguins have seen explorers in the present, but neither had seen much of either before the Antarctic expeditions.

Although a slow burn, I never lost sight of the finish line. I was looking for the next bit of poetry to spill out of Shackleton’s pen. He was as much of a writer as he was a leader and explorer. I believe the shining moment of the book comes when Shackleton and Worsley successfully traverse Elephant Island and make it to a whaling station, marking the end of their despair and the beginning of the crew’s rescue:

We had flung down the adze from the top of the fall and also the logbook and the cooker wrapped in one of our blouses. That was all, except our wet clothes, that we brought out of the Antarctic, which we had entered a year and a half before with well-found ship, full equipment, and high hopes. That was all of tangible things; but in memories we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had “suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole.” We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

The quote is in conversation with the poem The Call of the Wild and directly responds to rhetorical questions from the poem. I had to reread this passage several times before moving on because I just didn’t know how it could go up from there. Upon rescue, their first concern went as so:

“My name is Shackleton,” I said.

Immediately he put out his hand and said, “Come in. Come in.”

“Tell me, when was the war over?” I asked.

“The war is not over,” he answered. “Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad.”

Returning from a near-catastrophe in the Antarctic to a potential world-ending catastrophe going on in the rest of the globe, Shackleton maybe fancied his time stuck on the ice over watching the world burn itself alive. So what did he do after the crew of the Endurance returned? He, and most of his men, went to war. A few died, some were injured, and others served under Shackleton in Russia for Arctic training. What were British forces doing in Russia during World War 1? I leave that up to the reader to sort out (yes, you!).

Just a few days ago, I finally finished the book. It worked out for almost everyone on the journey. The same can’t be said for the Ross Sea Party or those who ended up slain in the Great War. The thing I like most about South was the random spurts of the human experience sandwiched between stretches of boring logs and technical ice jargon. It was a surprisingly easy read and one well worth-to anyone who wants to learn more about the loneliest, coldest continent.

I give South five out of five stars.