In The Heart Of The Sea By Nathaniel Shilbrick

The feeling of hopelessness as you drift further away, the feeling of no escape, and the feeling that whatever you do won’t matter because you’ll never get out are the feelings of being trapped. Being trapped can lead people to do horrific things that would be viewed down upon if they weren't trapped, such as resorting to cannibalism, stealing, or killing each other. It can make people feel like they don’t need to justify what they are doing, being what happens won’t affect them anyways. Nathaniel Philbrick does an amazing job presenting the feeling of being trapped in his story, In the Heart of the Sea. In the Heart of the Sea is a story about a crew from Nantucket on a whaleship named the Essex. The culture of whale hunting is how the island

Because of this, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick should be required in the 10th-grade curriculum due to its significant themes, powerful historical relevance, and excellence in the writer's craft.

The book In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick illustrates the significance of always being prepared and knowledge is power, which are fundamental themes for sophomores to learn. The first theme discussed in the book is always be prepared, and the book goes into detail that if, “the Essex had been a new ship”(Philbrick 89) then she wouldn’t have been destroyed in the crash with the whale and that it could have been prevented if the crew had inspected the ship before they left. This shows

The story of Essex is set in the early 1800s, which was also the time of the Industrial Revolution, which was a turning point in history for transportation and trade across the world, which in turn meant that the ships used would be powerful enough to take a whale attack; however, the island of Nantucket hadn’t used their resources to upgrade their ships. If Nantucket had taken part in the “great strides in transportation”(Wilkinson) that took place during the Industrial Revolution, their whaling profits would have increased and the safety of collecting the oil would have increased as well. Another part of Nantucket's history that is important to note is how the entire island economy almost collapsed in the mid-19th century because they tried to stop whaling “Nantucket suffered a near-catastrophic decline”(Conry) and was abandoned for years. If students knew this while reading the book, they would understand why the men on Nantucket viewed whaling with such high honor and why even though crew members may die and they might have faced traumatic experiences, they remained wanting to go back out to sea and if they were taken away from duty, they would try to find a different way to support the whaling crews. Not only was