With the novel Afterlands, it takes you to a place that you cannot imagine you ever being. It makes you think about yourself and what you would do if you were one of those nineteen people who got stranded on an ice floe that was 4 miles wide. There is a mixture of people from all different backgrounds. You have Tyson the American leader, Jackson the black cook, Meyer the German meteorologist, Herron the English stewaed, the German seamen: Kruger, Jamka, and Lindermann. The German-Russian seaman Anthing, Swedish seaman Lundquist, Danish seaman Madsen. There are also the Inuit families of Joe the hunter, Hannah his wife and Punnie their daughter, with the other hunter Hans, Christina his wife and their children Augustina, Tobias, Succi and the baby Charlie. All of these people become stranded on a large ice floe after they abandon their ship the Polaris. With all these different backgrounds forced together in a small space you have a lot of conflict that happens among them.…show more content… Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks contempt on outsiders” (Folkways 13). When there was a separation between the Germans and the other people on the ice floe, the Germans wanted to take over everything from the kills that Joe made for food to the storage supplies. After a while they all came back together again under the command of lieutenant Tyson. “It has been suggested that conservatism is motivated in part by psychological needs to minimize uncertainty and threat that there is a special resonance or match between motives to reduce uncertainty and threat, resistance to change and acceptance of inequality. For example, preserving traditions extinguishes fear of the unknown and allows one to stick with what is familiar and certain” (Psychological
