The Edge Essay

Peak Marcello, the main character as well as the narrator in Roland Smith’s novel The Edge, shows many unfiltered characteristics which are conveyed to the reader through a few key incidents that occur throughout the story. The Edge is a thrilling and suspenseful book where Peak was invited to a peace climb in Afghanistan, and just as the climb gets started, their group is attacked and most of the climbers are kidnapped–including Peak’s mom. The novel is the sequel to Roland Smith’s Peak, where Peak climbs Everest, and is also in first person point of view. As a result of Peak being the narrator, his feelings and character traits are communicated to the reader in a raw and unrefined way, coming from his inner self and not from someone observing

It is evident in the novel The Edge that Peak Marcello is very detail oriented and attentive while looking for traces of kidnappers that took his mom and friends. When Rafe – one of the climbers – and Peak start their way towards looking for the kidnapped climbers, Peak stays alert at all times, and says “It took me a while, but I found the white thing about forty feet to my left. It… [was] a cigarette butt, smoked about half-way down” (Smith 157). Later on he “squatted down, looked across the screen, and smiled… there were dozens of flipped rocks… Someone was smoking, and someone was dragging his feet” (Smith 157-158). It is apparent to readers that Peak is a very observant and perceptive character, and he is also intelligent and can figure something out with limited clues. Coming closer and closer to finding out where the kidnappers went, Peak was “paying close attention to the tracks for the last several miles, trying to memorize the patterns and guess which pattern belonged to whom” (Smith 200). He was aware of each of the climber’s boots, indicating that “Mom’s and Alessia’s were the easiest because their feet were smaller. Mom was wearing hiking boots… Alessia was wearing climbing shoes… The film crew was…wearing… identical climbing shoes… Zopa was wearing boots” (Smith 201). By examining these quotes, the reader can come to a conclusion

Peak is the first-person point of view narrator of this book, therefore learning about his character comes naturally as the reader gets through the book. Character traits such as dislike, annoyance, disinterest, and conscientiousness are what comes to mind when reading The Edge. By inspecting some key incidents in the book, one can draw a culmination of the character of Peak Marcello, and how his decisions are not only true, but what he says is correct as a result of him being the narrator. The Edge is the sequel to Peak, the previous book by Smith where Peak climbs Mount Everest, but Horn Book states that it “easily stands by itself. Though readers new to Peak’s world are likely to be so enthralled by the mountain-climbing action that they will go back to the previous book to tackle Everest with Peak as well.” Reading the previous book to this one, Peak, as well as the book after this, Ascent, will give readers a better long shot to analyze Peak’s personality and his