The play Terror and Erebus, written by Gwendolyn MacEwen, is about the tragedy of the Franklin expedition; an expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the 19th century. Franklin, the expedition leader, and the entire crew of both the Terror and the Erebus die on their journey to find the passage. The ships become stuck in the ice and the men are unable to handle the harsh winter conditions that are forced upon them. The men arrogantly thought they were prepared for their voyage because of their science-based knowledge. They thought that there compasses and various instruments would lead them to a successful quest; however, they forgot a key piece of the quest, the quest of learning. They did not try and learn the environmental conditions or the landscape of the latitude they would be travelling through. Consequently, this led to their demise; as the forces of nature conquered the science dependent men.
Nature is the physical world and all the products and features of the earth; it can be uncontrollable and unpredictable. Nature can terrorize landscapes and destroy cities; yet we think we can govern it with science and technology. Franklin and his crew thought they could overcome the threats of nature and believed that they, humans, were the most powerful. However, the crew did not understand “the nature of the place they stood on”(1b) and the sheer force of nature dominated their absolute logic. The Terror and Erebus became stuck in the ice and the men became stranded in the bitter cold of a “white asylum” (2b). As men died from the cold and from starvation, others still tried to push “the hell of […] science” onto nature, but the laws of science failed because no laws can govern nature. The mens’ logs, and charts, and instruments became useless in the conditions and were destroyed by nature. The “arrogant beast” that is men is humbled by the power of nature, as they are forced to “[kneel] like priests in the whiteness and [die].” Nature...