Mission 5: Learn More About Joe’s Experience

Mission 5 is now closed.

For our fifth mission, we invite you to learn more about what life might have been like for Joe Kavalier during his time in the war.

You could win a $50 Powell's gift card and be entered to win an Apple iPad Air 2!

The Mission

For this mission, we ask you to think about how you might find out more about Joe’s experience during the war by exploring the Chicago Public Library collection. What books, movies, or other items can you find in the collection that might illuminate Joe’s experience during the war, and in Antarctica? Titles need not be strictly about Antarctica during World War II; look for items that might shed more light on the Antarctica's geography, or its vastness, or experiences of explorers and travelers. Other ideas might include items about radio operators during the war, codes and code breaking, U boats, and other elements mentioned in the section that you might want to learn more about. The Secret War by Mike Paterson and Life on the Ice by Roff Smith are two examples of titles that might help us learn more about Joe Kavalier's experience in this section of the book.

Using the social sharing buttons in the catalog or by submitting directly, let us and the OBOC community know what you've found in the catalog through Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Be sure to tag your finds with #OBOCMission5.

Mission 5 Prize

One submission from Mission 5 will be chosen at random to win a $50 Powell's gift card, courtesy of BiblioCommons.

Grand Prize

There will be six missions over the course of the reading program.

At the end of the reading program, one submission will be chosen at random from across all six missions to win an Apple iPad Air 2, courtesy of BiblioCommons.

Submission Guidelines

Enter to win by submitting the catalog URL for your title from the Chicago Public Library collection:

We may share your submission on our website and social media too!

Submission Rules

  • You must be a registered Chicago Public Library patron.
  • You must be 13 years or older to enter.
  • Only submissions posted between midnight Monday, April 6 and 11:59 p.m. Sunday, April 26 will be entered for a chance to win the Mission 5 prize.
  • By using the #OBOCMission5 hashtag or submitting to the OBOC Facebook page, you are granting the Chicago Public Library permission to share your submission on the CPL website or on CPL social media accounts.

Background

“Antarctica was beautiful -- even Joe, who loathed it with every fiber of his being as the symbol, the embodiment, the blank unmeaning heart of his impotence in this war, had felt the thrill and grandeur of the ice.”

Fueled by his heartbreak and anger over the fate of his family, Joe Kavalier enlists in the army. But instead of the battlefields of Europe he imagined, Joe is sent to possibly the loneliest place on the planet: Antarctica, where he acts as the radio operator for his unit.

In Antarctica, Joe finds companionship and friendship with his fellow soldiers, as well as with the team's sled dogs, and the half-blind dog Oyster in particular. But Joe is also beset by boredom and brought low by the desolation of the landscape as well as by how far away he is from what he sees as the action of the war, and his ability to exact revenge upon the Germans for the loss of his family.

When a horrific accident takes the lives of all of the soldiers in the unit save Joe and one other, and all the dogs except Oyster, the survivors fall into despair, isolation, and obsession. In Joe’s case, he begins listening compulsively to the radio, and discovers that the Germans also have a presence on the icy continent.

After a disastrous visit to the German base, Joe narrowly escapes Antarctica. He also finally opens the stack of letters he has received during his time in the armed forces, and learns that Rosa and Sam Clay have married, leaving him on the verge of returning home to nothing: no family, no revenge, and his love lost to another.

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