In this chapter of Touching The Void, Simon is faced with a horrible decision; Should he cut the rope holding Joe and possibly kill him in the process, saving himself, or should he keep the rope attached, while his stability on the mountain diminishes by the second as it crumbles beneath him, in the house where Joe will find some way to take away his weight off. Bearing in mind his obliviousness regarding Joe's plight, this is a very difficult choice to make. A decision that ordinary people couldn't even imagine having to decide. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Alone for the first time on the frozen mountain, having just made a life-threatening decision, it's easy to imagine that getting a good night's sleep would be taxing. Simon drifts in and out of consciousness. Simon isn't upset that he might have killed Joe, he just describes it as the weight falling off my life so suddenly and violently that I couldn't fully comprehend it. This shows that Simon is trying not to think of Joe as a real human being who he perhaps killed. The adjective violently has connotations of pain and murder, which may suggest that Simon is unconsciously making himself the villain. After a long night of tossing and turning, Simon wakes up feeling surprisingly rested, ready to complete his descent and determined not to spend another night. night in the mountains, this combined with his dehydrated state leaves the reader to believe that his journey up the mountain will soon end; he will die of dehydration or climb to the foot of the mountain before the end of the day. When Simon tells the reader that I felt watched, it is probably because, having convinced himself that by running away, he is behaving almost like a criminal whose crime has not yet been discovered, he feels excessively paranoid. Alone on the mountain without Joe, Simon is building beings in immobility, as if to keep him company and break his descent into solitude. This is shown when he says I knew, and they knew The verb knew is a common verb but is still an interesting linguistic choice as it has connotations of certainty and shows that, at the time, Simon believed his fate was assured. In the morning when Simone remembers dressing as a priest before mass, with careful ceremony. leads to extreme comparisons, shedding new light on the situation. The simile used conveys a message of goodness since priests are supposed to be messengers of God, who behave perfectly. Instead, the author of the simile was anything but good at that moment, because he believed he had killed an innocent person. The purpose of the simile is to cast poor Simon in a bad light and he is strategically positioned to do just that. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Simon wakes in the morning to find the event of days gone by a distant dream, he says. The terror in the night was gone with the dawn, this suggests that he is leaving the incident behind to continue with the more important task ahead. He even states the dark, thought-torn hours behind me, the word dark combined with the fact that it is behind him suggests that he has cleared his mind of any lingering guilt and is finally ready to finish what he and Joe have started what seems like years ago.