Question

In what Fear can teach us by Karen Walker Which quote from the text best supports this answer: The sailors’ fear of cannibalism overshadowed their sound judgment, so they refused to sail to nearby islands.
A
“The time had come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options... these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth.” ( Paragraph 5)
B
“To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land. These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men” ( Paragraph 5)
C
“When the last of the survivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism.” ( Paragraph 9)
D
“perhaps if they’d been able to read their fears more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the less violent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation” ( Paragraph 10)

Answer 1

The  quote from the text that  best supports the answer is -To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land. These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men,

Explanation:

To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land. These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men.

By reading the above statement it is clear that the sailors fear that what  they chose to listen to would govern whether they lived or died.

In the year  1819  the crew of the whaleship Essex drifted in the middle of the Pacific. The ship was capsized for 24 hours and now it was the time to take a decision ,to make a plan but they had very few options. The narrator  Nathaniel Philbrick wrote that these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth.

The nearest islands they could reach were the Marquesas Islands which was about  1,200 miles away from the ships position but then they have heard some frightening rumors about the island  populated by cannibals. Another option was  Hawaii, but  the captain was afraid they’d be struck by severe storms. Now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that could eventually push them toward the coast of South America.