The Perfect Storm

by

Sebastian Junger

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Perfect Storm makes teaching easy.

Karen Stimpson Character Analysis

Karen Stimpson is a 42-year-old experienced sailor who, with her friend Sue Bylander, is hired by Ray Leonard to crew the sailboat Satori’s trip to Bermuda. She fights to keep the Satori afloat before calling in a mayday, and she comes to terms with the likelihood of her death before ultimately being rescued by Dave Moore of the Coast Guard. She defends Leonard’s stubbornness about being rescued, understanding his attachment to his boat.

Karen Stimpson Quotes in The Perfect Storm

The The Perfect Storm quotes below are all either spoken by Karen Stimpson or refer to Karen Stimpson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Money and the Fishing Industry Theme Icon
).
The World of the Living Quotes

"I was in a corner and I covered myself with soft things," says Stimpson, "and with a flashlight I took about ten minutes and wrote some goodbyes and stuck it in a ziplock bag and put it in my clothing. That was the lowest point. […] But it's a strange thing. There was no sentiment there, no time for fear. […] It was a grim sense of reality, a scrambling to figure out what to do next, a determination to stay alive and keep other people alive, and an awareness of the dark noisy slamming of the boat. But it wasn’t a terror beyond words. I just had an overwhelming sense of knowing we weren’t going to make it."

Related Characters: Karen Stimpson (speaker), Sue Bylander (speaker), Ray Leonard (speaker)
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

"When I got up into the helicopter I remember everyone looking in my and Sue's faces to make sure we were okay," says Stimpson. "I remember the intensity, it really struck me. […] They’d take us by the shoulders and look us in the eyes and say, 'I'm so glad you're alive, we were with you last night, we prayed for you. […] When you're on the rescuing side you're very aware of life and death, and when you're on the rescued side, you just have a sort of numb awareness. At some point I stopped seeing the risk clearly, and it just became an amalgam of experience and observation."

Related Characters: Karen Stimpson (speaker), Sue Bylander (speaker), Ray Leonard (speaker)
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Perfect Storm PDF

Karen Stimpson Quotes in The Perfect Storm

The The Perfect Storm quotes below are all either spoken by Karen Stimpson or refer to Karen Stimpson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Money and the Fishing Industry Theme Icon
).
The World of the Living Quotes

"I was in a corner and I covered myself with soft things," says Stimpson, "and with a flashlight I took about ten minutes and wrote some goodbyes and stuck it in a ziplock bag and put it in my clothing. That was the lowest point. […] But it's a strange thing. There was no sentiment there, no time for fear. […] It was a grim sense of reality, a scrambling to figure out what to do next, a determination to stay alive and keep other people alive, and an awareness of the dark noisy slamming of the boat. But it wasn’t a terror beyond words. I just had an overwhelming sense of knowing we weren’t going to make it."

Related Characters: Karen Stimpson (speaker), Sue Bylander (speaker), Ray Leonard (speaker)
Page Number: 153
Explanation and Analysis:

"When I got up into the helicopter I remember everyone looking in my and Sue's faces to make sure we were okay," says Stimpson. "I remember the intensity, it really struck me. […] They’d take us by the shoulders and look us in the eyes and say, 'I'm so glad you're alive, we were with you last night, we prayed for you. […] When you're on the rescuing side you're very aware of life and death, and when you're on the rescued side, you just have a sort of numb awareness. At some point I stopped seeing the risk clearly, and it just became an amalgam of experience and observation."

Related Characters: Karen Stimpson (speaker), Sue Bylander (speaker), Ray Leonard (speaker)
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis: