~~[Mini Book Review]: Futility ~~

Happened to watch Titanic over the weekend (no, not the first time!). I always have felt that a movie or a book gives you different experiences when read at different times in your life! This definitely proved as one such example. The first time I had watched the movie in theater and without subtitles, I was a teenager.  Yes, I was sad for the disaster, I had cried and I was moved by the aftermath and the tragedy. I still am.  However, the depth of the characters, the dialogues of each character, the agony that each might have gone through hit me hard only this time.

Like the trend nowadays, I immediately went to Wiki to read further and thanks to Wiki, a bit of reading led me to a book “The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility” written by Morgan Robertson having strange eerie similarities to the sinking of Titanic. The book was published in 1898 – Titanic sailed and sank in 1912. The book features an unsinkable ship of similar specifications as that of Titanic. This fictional ship also has lesser lifeboats than the ship’s capacity, just like Titanic! The supposedly unsinkable ship “Titan” sinks in North Atlantic on a cold April night after hitting an iceberg – yes, just how “Titanic” did.

Too many of these spooky parallels – made me pick the book. I was expecting a detailed read of the sinking, however, was quite surprised that the actual sinking and the aftermath of the shipwreck was not discussed at length at all. The book takes us through the uncertainty of John Rowland’s life, one of the 13 survivors of the shipwreck, who keeps encountering situations which are too difficult to get out of. At a point, when he is too desperate, though he being an atheist, he looks up to the sky for help from whoever is up above there. Its about this man who somehow manages to moves forward as life directs him to without the possibility to even have any clear view of his own.

And oh, he is strong too, he slays a polar bear on the iceberg single handedly!  Though I couldn’t fathom what a polar bear was doing on that lonely iceberg in the mid of a vast ocean, it did give an impression that it probably was a very huge iceberg.  The one in the movie doesn’t seem too large or vast.

As a reader, you keep hoping that John’s clear conscience through these endless situations doesn’t prove futile in the end – and well, there’s a happy ending too :)

Definitely recommend the book – for the similarities and for the story too