Unit1 Good Friends

one night in the darkness, he finds a light from afar. it must be a ship. chuck is very excited and he uses his flashlight for sos signal. but it is of no use. the light is too weak to be noticed by people on the ship. the following day, chuck tries to row the lifeboat to the ship. however, big waves turn his lifeboat upside down， and to make things worse, he is injured on the leg. that night there is a heavy thunderstorm. chuck has to hide himself in a cave. he forgets to turn off the flashlight and the battery runs off.
as the hope of being saved is getting less and less, he faces challenges of survival. an idea strikes his mind, and he opens every and each parcel. videotapes are thrown away and so are important commercial contracts and documents. a pair of skating shoes, a nightgown,7 and a volleyball are kept. the blades8 are used as knives for cutting, and the nightgown as fishing net. as for the volleyball, chuck uses his blood to draw a man's face on it and names it "wilson" who gives him spiritual comfort. he begins to talk to the "man" he has created and wilson has become his company.
next he has to start a fire. without fire, he has not had any food or hot water for days except eating live fish and drinking rainwater and coconut juice. he gets some wood and works on it for a long time. he almost loses his hope until he discovers that air is important to start a fire. he drills the wood in the middle with a stick while blowing some air in between the two pieces. when a fire is finally made, chuck sings and dances like a tribesman,9 happy for the first time after landing on the island. he has his first meal, a cooked crab.
four years later, chuck becomes an experienced primitive man. he still keeps his girlfriend's photo in his cave. beside the photo, there stands another companion of his for those lonely years—wilson. chuck is so used to talking to wilson, the volleyball, that he regards as his best friend. once he throws away wilson in anger and despair but only finds himself more lonely and desperate. so he searches for it and is very excited to get it back. then he paints wilson's face with his blood again so that wilson has a new face.
one day, he finds a part of the plane on the shore, which gives him an idea. he cuts down the biggest tree on the island and makes it into a man's sculpture. he pulls it up to the highest point of the island and erects it there. then he plans to build a raft and starts working on it.
chuck at last completes his grandiose10 project and begins to row towards sea with his dear friend wilson. at the moment of leaving his island on which he has lived for four years, a sense of sadness overwhelms11 him. he has somehow a special attachment to the island, feeling like leaving his sweet home.