The Importance Of Adversity In 'Henrietta Lacks'

Imagine that you were Douglas Mawson, along with two other explorers exploring unknown Antarctica, when everything goes wrong. Douglas Mawson suffered more adversity than Henrietta Lacks and Phineas Gage. Henrietta Lacks is about a woman who died from cervical cancer and her cells were extracted; later to find that her cells were immortal. Phineas Gage was a normal man when an extraordinary thing happened—he had a iron rod go through his skull. Phineas gage didn’t go through as much hardship, but he did go through more than Lacks. Half way through Mawson’s journey, both of his partners died, and it was just him, all alone in Antarctica. So, as anyone could see, Mawson experiences the most adversity among the three figures for many reasons.

Mawson went on an exploration in Antarctica with many challenges, like wind gusts up to 200 miles per hour, very limited food and other resources, and the journey was a total of 600 miles. In the fourth paragraph of “Into the Unknown,” it says “with gusts up to 200 mph;” winds like that are easily strong enough to knock someone off their feet. Gage or Lacks never went on a journey this difficult, but they had minor adversities. Second most important, the seventh paragraph talks about how Ninnis falls down a large crevasse. Along with Ninnis, they lost all of the dog food all of the men’s food and their three man tent. Phineas never really went through a journey to this extent like Mawson. Lastly, throughout the whole article it said that is was a 300 mile journey there and a 300 mile journey back. Not to mention that Mawson traveled most of the journey back by

One important part was in the seventh paragraph. It is talking about how Nini’s died by falling down a huge crevasse. It says, “There was no sign of Ninnis or the sledge.” (“Into the Unknown”). In Lacks’ story she was already dead so we don't know about the physical adversities she went through before she died. Second most important, Mawson had to bury his friend who was the only other person with him on the journey. In the 17th paragraph his says, “Mawson buried his friend, still in the sleeping bag,” so Mawson had to go through the horror of burying his friend (“Into the Unknown”). Lastly, many times Mawson said that this was the end and he was going to die. Just imagine you being in this situation and putting yourself in his