Recently I read a literary nonfiction book called “Trapped“, written by Marc Aronson in 2011. Its main topics are mining, accident rescue, and late-stage imperialism. The book started off with a mine called San José that collapsed and trapped 33 miserable miners down in its shaft, which is 2,000ft below the Chilean Desert. Comapaninges and organiztions like NASA and Cementation Inc. of multiple countries came to Chile to try their best to rescue the trapped miners. Throughout the author’s descrption of the rescue, readers could learn the importance of hope and teamwork and people discovered an astounding reason of why the San José mine collapsed and trapped the miners : late-stage imperialism that existed in mining.

 

In this notebook page, I came up with a significant central idea about late-stage imperialism. The pages I cited show how the mine owners of San José opressed and exploited their workers, only caring about making money. I also putted this central idea in “Failure of Risk management” in “Issues” because it jeopardizes the society and is one of the reasons that caused the San José mining accident.

 

In this notebook page, I figured out another central idea in “Trapped”. It is the fact that people tend to believe more in religious things when they are in a desperate situation, because people can comfort themselves more with positive beliefs. I also wrote about the most crucial theme in this book, which is “The really great teams are the really bonded ones“, and embedded a text evidence to support this theme. It is about how the trapped miners cooperated and helped each other to survive in the collapsed mine.

 

I drew a mind-map about three connected themes in “Trapped”, they are related to the fact that tough situations could bring people toger, how teamwork makes a good team, and always having hope. By making this map, I relfected on and learned a lot about how to stay positive and collaborative in my life. I also wrote and connected some text evidence with the topic and main themes of the book. The sentences I highlighted or underlined in the same colors are connected too.

 

This notebook page included how I understood a section of the book after re-reading it and connecting it with a new idea in the book. At first, I did not understand why the miners were very imporverished and poor. But after reading more, I discovered a piece of evidence that revealed the cause, which is about the mine owners being very nonchalant and uncaring to their workers, so they exploited them and paid them very less.

 

I highly recommend this book, because it has many common sciences about geology, geography, and mining that we should learn more about and has many informative and frank languages that help you to read quickly. This book also teached me how important teamwork and hope are and how they can make my life more successful and positive.