Section One Summary and Analysis

Alive is the story of an airplane flight that crashed over the Andes mountains. It is also the story of how some of the stranded passengers survived following the crash and their reintegration into the society they left behind. The passengers were united through the Old Christians rugby team. Fifteen passengers were players, but an additional twenty-five passengers were friends and family of the players. Long before the team came together, the men were boys growing up in the country of Uruguay.

Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in South America. At the time that the author wrote the book, much of the country existed as lush pasture land. The largest city, Montevideo, was more densely populated and housed a mercantile class. Uruguay was relatively peaceful in the 1970's, but prior to that, the country experienced much instability...