Not Everything Goes According to Plans

       In the next section of the memoir, the adventure is underway. There is no turning back. The author switches from using exposition at the beginning to using only narration. In this type of adventure memoirs, it would be very monotonous to use exposition since the attractive part is to decipher and take a stance according to a given situation. Guevara continues to use pathos and some ethos as his main rhetoric strategies. He is now trying to portray “Che’s” character as a perseverant youth who will never give up until he reaches North America. I found it very interesting to see how the journey begins by describing boring towns with no real attractions. For example, in describing  San Martín de los Andes, Guevara syas that “the road snakes between the low foothills that sound the beginning of the great cordillera of the Andes, then descends steeply until it reaches an unattractive, miserable town, surrounded by magnificent, densely wooded mountains” (p. 44). Guevara focuses more on the atmosphere and the landscape that he goes through more than the actual cities. Nevertheless, the cities remain the titles of the chapters, which means that they are in a sense important to the description of the journey across Latin America.

         Alberto designed a plan that projected a rapid and easy culmination of the journey in a few days. However, plans did not go as smoothly as they realized it was going to take them much longer than what they expected. This was due to all the obstacles they had to face in their trip. I was impressed by the great problem-solving techniques “Che” had and the efficient ways in which he was able to find good solutions instantly. The way in which Guevara describes this situations in a way presents “Che” as a hero from a very early stage. What is interesting is that he does not do this in the typical way of highlighting his main accomplishments and stating how great he was. Instead, Guevara thoroughly narrates very difficult situations in which the riders are faced with a harsh challenge and very few time for analysis. It comes down to the ability of improvisation. Also, the ability to adapt to completely different environments helps to manipulate pathos in this sense. Guevara declares, “At six in the morning, we started our first job…” (p. 45). This was certainly not what they had expected their trip to be like. It is their perseverance to accomplish their objective what makes them the true heroes and protagonists for the reader.