Adventure
When Sir Ernest Shackleton decides to man a crew and journey to the remotest part of earth's surface, he is accepting a call to adventure. This adventure imagery synchronously blooms throughout their journey, so that life's narrative structure becomes clear. By the end, the crew has endured life's trials and tribulations, literally, and the hero of the quest is turned into a real hero, returning to Antarctica to save his ship-wrecked crew.
Absurd heroism
The heroism of this quest is absurd in flavor. The trip is pretty close to meaningless, because there isn't much in Antarctica, and nothing to be gained by way of natural resources or monetary gain. They do the trip for glory, for the wonder of nature and exploration, and for the experience of something "new under the sun." The heroism of accepting death and undertaking a painful journey into icy places reminds the reader of the hero's journey into the dark realm of water, cold, and chaos, and back again.
Death and suffering
The imagery that shapes the journey for the crew is the constant pain of cold weather, the onset of frostbite and hypothermia, and the threat of death. This imagery includes precarious navigation of icebergs, and then the eventual tragedy of shipwreck. When the vessel collides with an unseen chunk of iceberg, many people fall to their deaths in icy waters, and many are left to survive the world's most inhospitable climate. Some survive, but many die.
Extreme natural imagery
The obvious natural imagery is the icy colds of Antarctic waters. The icebergs become full-blown landmasses, difficult to navigate and naturally treacherous because of the unseen parts of icebergs which threaten to damage the vessel. The extreme colds lead to painful medical conditions, but the crew still has to navigate the seas often working for hours outside in negative temperatures. Ultimately, the shipwreck survivors endure these extreme conditions for unknown times, not knowing whether their captain will survive a return trip to save them. Ironically, the imagery is completed by animal life. The impossible domain is already populated by specially designed animals who apparently don't mind the cold.
