TOW #4: IRB- How Callahan Became Adrift

Steven Callahan’s story Adrift, begins with his creation of the boat “Solo” and leads into how his survival experience began. Callahan discusses how he built the ship “Solo” himself, and how he took pride in the boat as if it were his own child, therefore the reader understands his connection to Solo, and how devastated he is when it sinks in the massive ocean storm. The climax builds as he informs the reader about his journey from Spain back to the Caribbean, where he can take a mini-vacation, however this is when the story of a delighted sailor turns into the survival mission that Callahan had to endure in order to save his life.

The purpose of this survival tale is to not only inform the public of his mission of maintaining to survive for 76 days in the middle of the Atlantic, but to also thank his peers and role models who prepared him for this experience. Callahan constantly states that he is not a hero nor heroic, he believes that he succeeded in a scenario where he was expected not to, and he stresses his gratitude to his ex-wife, boy scout troops, etc, for preparing him for the toughest experience of his life. The memoir is directed to any audience because he wants to make his story well known because it is indeed a record breaker for the longest time a man was stranded at sea.

Callahan uses humor to connect to ethos, and also metaphors as rhetorical devices. The humor is used because it fits well into his story by taking away the seriousness of his survival mission and contrasting it with humor to make the story flow better. The metaphors connect the story of survival to ideas that the audience is familiar about, therefore they will understand the complexity of Callahan’s story, and hopefully understand his experience better. This ultimately allows him to achieve his purpose because humor connects to ethos because it allows the audience to trust Callahan, therefore they will listen to his story, which will achieve his purpose of writing the text.