Cruelest Miles Analysis

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1. This story is written by an “outsider,” someone not directly involved in the events. What is the author’s purpose in writing this story? In Salisbury’s Cruelest miles, teams of dogs race to get a cure for a deadly disease that is gradually killing people in Nome, Alaska. The author's purpose in writing in this story was to analyze and interpret many aspects in this story. Throughout this story, each of the chapters contents would hold information regarding the history of Alaska or how dogsledding became to be etc. For example, “writing in 1914, Hudson stuck believed that it would be rash to predict that the dog teams would ever be completely abandoned on the trails of Alaska...Eleven years later, the decision to go with the dogs to rush …show more content…
For the single reason of transporting a serum to wipe out a fatal epidemic, multiple teams are working together o transport this serum to Nome. As the author writes about maintaining the needs of dogs he also writes “The first rule of survival was to hang on to the team because without the dogs you were dead”(63). In this case, the value of dogs was much deeper than just being a pet, they were heavily relied on for everything. To make the difficult journey to get the serum and transport it back, the dogs had to be well maintained and there had to be a level of trust between a dog and his owner. In addition, another team had to meet Leonhard Seppala, the sledder from Nome, halfway to give the serum in order for the transportation to work most efficiently. Meanwhile, Alaska’s governor must coordinate with the Public Health Service in order to obtain the serum transport it to by train to his team who then transports takes it to Seppala. In other words, the whole process took much planning and …show more content…
Although each chapter contained information about events in the past, it ended with how those events applied in the present and how those past events shaped the present society of Nome, Alaska. Reading this book did change my thoughts on the theme of the story. Although the importance of teamwork was a major and important part of the plot, the book is styled so that each chapter starts out with a historic event that took place and then how it shaped the present. This included how the first dogsled team came to be or the history of alaska and how it shaped it modern culture etc. This makes me think that rather than teamwork, the theme is more along the lines of everything in history affects the present and future. The author wants the audience to understand that all the historic facts was not to bore an audience but rather interpret it to fit in today's

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