Top Man by james ramsey ullman Summary

“Top Man” by James Ramsey Ullman is a short story about an expedition to climb to the top of K-3, a Himalayan mountain. The two main characters are Martin Nace and Paul Osborn who are the ones striving to reach the summit. Both characters in this story would be considered round; however, one, Nace, is static and the other, Osborn, is dynamic.
Ullman developed Martin Nace into a round character by giving a lot of information about his backstory and he seems more realistic. Nace, an Englishman, had been on five other expeditions and has been a climber for twenty years. The author gives a good description of Nace when he says he was “in his forties – lean, taciturn, introspective. An official in the Indian Civil Service, he had explored and climbed in the Himalayans for twenty year.” On the other hand, his emotions do not vary throughout the short story so he is a static character.
Paul Osborn is also a round character because of the material Ullman gives regarding his inside story, and he seems like a guy you would know. He is a young man at twenty-three years old and fresh out of college. Maybe it is because of his immaturity and range of emotions that he is a dynamic character. Some of the words used to describe him and when he talks including his reactions to others are “irk, moodily, glared, snapped, and snorted.” About halfway through the story Ullman wrote, “Osborn was magnificent. All the boyish impatience and moodiness which he had exhibited earlier were gone, and, now he was at last at work in his natural element, he emerged as the peerless mountaineer he was.”
The two main characters, Nace and Osborn showed similar and different traits

References

• Top Man by James Ramsey Ullman – Goodreads
• The Literature of American Adolescence: Redefining the Young Adult – Google Books
• From a Distance: Mobility, Space, and Desire in Alpine Climbing Literature – University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Himalayas – AccessScience from McGraw-Hill Education