In the Eiger Sanction, Clint Eastwood’s character and his French climbing partner are trapped on an impossibly frozen slope, unable to move. The Frenchman contemplates their fate:
Montaigne: Jonathan, you’re very good. I have enjoyed climbing with you.
Jonathon: We’ll make it.
Montaigne: I don’t think so. But we shall continue with style.
In perhaps an apocryphal story, a World War II fighter pilot finds his aircraft shot up, on fire, his ejection seat ruined. He screams his distress to headquarters as his plane rockets to the unforgiving ocean below. And then, in a firm tone that does not waver, another voice breaks into the radio. “Shut up and die like an aviator.”
