This quotation is the final statement Melville makes in the book The Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette, and is significant to the development of the story because the rhetorical devices Sides’ uses evokes pity from the reader and expresses the hardships they faced on the journey. The most striking feature of the quotation is the asyndeton used in the following: “simplicity of the obsequies, the oppressive stillness, the wonderful wilderness of white” (Sides 397). The author uses this technique to employ how desolate the area where the men died is. In addition, he uses coarse diction in the “o” alliteration, which contrasts with the “w” alliteration that follows and possesses peaceful diction. He adds to
