Scott's Last Biscuit: The Literature of Polar Exploration

by Sarah Moss

Emphasizing themes of endurance and obsession, tales from the poles are testimony to scientific dedication, ambition, greed and the often fatal attraction of alien landscapes. Some explorers (Ernest Shackleton, Captain Oates and Roald Amundsen) have become icons of national identity, while others, as famous in their day, fall into obscurity. Polar exploration has also initiated a literature with its own history and development. This book discusses the most influential and popular accounts of polar journeys, from the fourteenth-century tax collector who arrived at the Viking settlement in Greenland to find it strangely deserted to Robert Falcon Scott's meticulous account of his own dying. Sarah Moss offers literary readings of books by Nansen, Scott, Franklin and Parry as well as bringing to light less famous but equally important works by other explorers, missionaries and archaeologists from Europe and North America. Thematically arranged, Scott's Last Biscuit considers the morbid fascination of expeditions that go horribly wrong and the even greater interest attached to those that are rescued at the last minute, paying particular attention to the impulse to find and even exhume long-lost travellers. Looking at risks ranging from frostbite and polar bears to starvation and cannibalism, it also analyses the enduring appeal of romanticized polar landscapes, the relationship between nationhood and exploration and literary approaches to polar travel from Winnie the Pooh to Frankenstein. Sarah Moss considers the representation of indigenous communities as well as the little-charted role of women in polar writing. She discusses Jennie Darlington's unjustly neglected American 1950s autobiography, My Antarctic Honeymoon ("for protection against the polar winds I applied lipstick"), Letitia Hargraves' moving and likeable journal of life as the wife of a Hudson's Bay Company factor in the early nineteenth century, and Isobel Hutchison's solitary travels around Greenland in the 1930s as a botanist for Kew Gardens.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Travel

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Sarah Moss is the award-winning author of six novels: Cold Earth, Night Waking, selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone, all shortlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Prize, and her new book Ghost Wall, out in September 2018.

She has also written a memoir of her year living in Iceland, Names for the Sea, which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2013.

Sarah Moss is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in England.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Draws some long bows in the manner of literary criticism everywhere, but in general, an interesting and informative survey.

[Karyl · Rating 4 out of 5]

As we’ve already established, if it fits into what my friends and I call “sad boat,” I will read it. This definitely is part of the genre, but interestingly Moss doesn’t focus on just one or two polar explorations. Instead she gives us an overview of many of the expeditions that attempted to conquer the poles.

I found this book to be quite interesting, especially considering that Moss examines why the polar regions have captured our fancy for so long, and why those of us left behind are so obsessed with learning more about the men who traveled there and usually died there. Of note, Moss points out that those Europeans that valued the contributions of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic tended to have much better outcomes than those who felt they were merely “savages” or “barbarians” who had no moral compass, according to those same Europeans.

Too often, men went to the poles completely unprepared for the climate and the dangers of these parts of the world. The Andrée expedition, in which three men were to head to the North Pole by balloon, was an abysmal failure after they had to divest themselves of all the ballast and a good portion of their supplies to remain aloft, and then their balloon crashed down anyway. At that point, the men’s clothing was no match for the frigid temperatures. The contrast between Scott, who carefully arranged how he would be found after death, both in his physical body and in the writings he left behind, and Franklin, who disappeared without a trace, but whose men carried the strangest array of silver cutlery and fancy dress, weighing them down unnecessarily, is quite fascinating.

The last section, where Moss describes how polar exploration influenced the literature of the day, was less interesting to me. I felt she reached quite a bit in some of her points, and it read more like a paper to be submitted for a class than a portion of a published book. I tended to skim that part.

One would really need to be interested in polar exploration to enjoy this book, but it’s a worthy addition to the genre.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grabbed this book at the library on my way out and am so happy I did. Her research of Greenland, Iceland and the explorers through the ages that tried to reach the North Pole are rich with excerpts from historical pieces. I really enjoyed.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something about human nature that strives for adventure and also immortality. In the Artic and Antartic, many adventurers found both. Sir John Franklin's expedition to the Artic ended up killing his entire party of 135. One of his men's bodies was found 140 years later, and John Torrington's body was extremely well preserved. Robert Falcon Scott did not survive his trek to the South Pole but his journals did. Some of the extreme expeditions ended up resorting in cannibalism, including Franklin's. Adventurers found it patriotic to try and conquer the poles first for their countries. Artic adventure even had quite an impact on literature, and they inspired parts of the stories of The Chronicles of Narnia, Frankenstein, Peter Pan, and Winnie the Pooh. It is interesting that freezing has quite a remarkable ability to capture the human imagination.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a general overview of polar exploration. It's more about the first-hand accounts written by explorers as well as the cultural and literary impact of these trips to the Arctic and Antarctic. Some knowledge of Scott and Franklin may be helpful.

3.5

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read about half of this book. Interesting, but the author is a bit irritating, and I stopped before I read about the cannibalism group. eww.