Passage Summary:
In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the remote Andes mountains, forcing the young men to resort to dire measures to survive. Instead of resigning to starvation (and perhaps, listening to their superego), they chose to engage in cannibalism.
When and How to Pair:
Introduce this text after students read Chapter 16, in order to examine plot, with an additional example of people who found themselves in a life-threatening situation. Ask students to compare the dangers of being lost at sea with being stranded on a snowy mountain. How do Abbey and Noah find themselves in this dangerous situation? How does this compare to what led the Uruguayan rugby team’s plane to crash? How might both of these dangerous situations have been avoided? NOTE: “The 1972 Andes Flight Disaster” includes depictions of cannibalism, that students might find disturbing.