How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He had worked on the fish spear until it had become more than just a tool. He'd spent hours and hours on it. (12.5)
The fish spear is "more than just a tool" because of the hours of work that Brian has put into it. Why is this? Will it catch fish any better than, say, a fish spear that Brian bought at the store? What exactly is it about making the spear himself that makes it so special?
Quote #5
He could not play the game without hope; could not play the game without a dream. They had taken it all away from him now, they had turned away from him and there was nothing for him now. The plane gone, his family gone, all of it gone. They would not come. He was alone and there was nothing for him. (12.30)
Without the "dream" of rescue, everything he's been doing suddenly seems pointless and false—just a "game."
Quote #6
To where he wanted to die. He had settled into the gray funk deeper and still deeper until finally, in the dark, he had gone up on the ridge and taken the hatchet and tried to end it by cutting himself.
Madness. A hissing madness that took his brain. There had been nothing for him then and he tried to become nothing but the cutting had been hard to do, impossible to do, and he had at last fallen to his side, wishing for death, wishing for an end, and slept only didn't sleep.
With his eyes closed and his mind open he lay on the rock through the night, lay and hated and wished for it to end and thought the word Clouddown, Clouddown through that awful night. Over and over the word, wanting all his clouds to come down, but in the morning he was still there. (13.13-15)
This is Brian at his lowest moment. Without the hope of being rescued, he sees no reason to go on. We never get to see what happens between the suicide attempt and forty-two-days-later Brian. What do you think changed that allows him to persevere in the end?