Antartica

Crichton (2004) here has created a geographical representation of the mass expanse of the continent of Antarctica. There is this movement through temporal space and you get the feel of ‘through the looking glass’ from the aircraft at this great expanse of ice and snow with a low lying sun in the horizon. Crichton (2004) has manifested a landscape of mystery as this landscape is not fully understood by humans and there are a limited number of people who inhabit this huge continent of ice and snow. This creates a non-mimetic representation of the world; the use of fog creates a barrier of fully understanding the frozen world. Jackson (1981) explains that the ‘topography of the modern fantastic’ which is created through problems of vision or ambiguity is represented in this instance with the use of fog.

“Evans stared out the narrow window of the Hercules....he was fascinated by what he saw beneath him- mile after mile of gray ice, broken by intermittent fog, and the occasional outcrop of black rock. It was monochromatic, sunless world. And it was huge.....’Its a big continent, one and half times the size of either Europe or the United States, and it holds ninety percent of all the ice on the planet’” (p227)