TOW #4 (IRB)- The Lost City of Z

Written by David Grann

In the book, The Lost City of Z, David Grann tells the magnificent story of the early 1900’s British explorer, Percy Fawcett. As a young man, Percy Fawcett left his military post in the British colony of Ceylon in order to pursue his dream of exploring uncharted territories across the world. In 1925, Percy and his son Jack set out to find a fabled Native American civilization nicknamed “Z” deep with the Amazon jungle. Percy was well established as one of the top explorers in the world, but shortly after the beginning of his journey to find Z, they went missing and were never found. In 2005, journalist David Grann set out to solve the mystery behind Fawcett’s disappearance. After conducting thorough research in London at the Royal Geographers Society and the home of Fawcett’s only daughter, Grann analyzes the life of the great explorer and eventually travels to Brazil to begin his search for Percy Fawcett and his son. Grann directs this excellent nonfiction piece towards adventurous people that love exploring the outdoors as he describes Fawcett’s grueling journeys through the dense jungle with little food and supplies.  Another immediate audience for this book is geographers and historians interested in Percy Fawcett’s travels and his mysterious disappearance. After conducting research on his life, Grann informs and convinces readers that Percy Fawcett possessed incredible determination and a natural gift for exploration that made him invincible in the treacherous Amazonian jungle. Grann effectively communicates this purpose by using vivid imagery and similes while depicting Fawcett’s many journeys. During a long expedition in Bolivia in 1910, Grann described the group of explorers as, “Starving, wet, feverish, pocked with mosquito bites, the party began to eat itself from within, like maggots corkscrewing through Murray’s body,” meanwhile, Fawcett “Seemed unmolested. He discovered one or two maggots beneath his skin…. but he did not poison them, and the wounds caused by their burrowing remained uninfected” (135). This descriptive language and simile stands out to readers and appeals to pathos. Readers are affected emotionally as they hear these terrible circumstances during the expeditions, and come to realize Percy Fawcett’s great strength and invincibility in the Amazon. In my opinion, this description not only affectively communicated its purpose by appealing to pathos, but it also appeals to ethos. The thorough descriptions prove that David Grann has put in the research in order to create an accurate story, which helps communicate his purpose to the reader.

Source- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4734059/The-Lost-City-of-Z.html

The last photograph of Percy Fawcett in the Amazon Jungle taken shortly before his disappearance in 1925.