People don’t go to Antarctica. They’re called to Antarctica.

People don’t go to Antarctica. They’re called to Antarctica. is the inscription that turns Bernadette Fox’s intended journey home into an abrupt departure for Antarctica. Printed on a book she has just used to wipe icing from her face, the phrase first appears as borrowed language; Bernadette’s decision not to leave the tram at the terminal makes it a turning point in her story.

The Phrase and the Book

The words appear on the back of The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, identified as one of the few survivors of Captain Scott’s ill-fated attempt to reach the South Pole. The book is with Bernadette in Miami, where she has bought a Cinnabon before heading toward the ticket counter to buy passage home. With icing on her hands and face, she asks a woman to unzip her vest pocket, finds the book there, and uses its clean pages to wipe herself. The inscription is thus encountered through an undignified, practical gesture rather than a formal search for guidance.

From Inscription to Decision

When the tram reaches the main terminal, Bernadette does not get off. Instead, she goes to Antarctica. The contrast between the stated plan—returning home and accepting her fate—and the choice she makes at the terminal gives the phrase its immediate narrative function: it recasts a deliberate change of direction as a summons. Yet the moment preserves her agency. The wording suggests that Antarctica calls its visitors, while Bernadette’s refusal to leave the tram is the concrete act that takes her there.

The Call Made Concrete

Bernadette later describes her three-week voyage aboard the Allegra as a time-out with Bee Branch, explaining that once the ship sailed there would be no way to communicate. After two days of severe seasickness, she wakes to an iceberg towering beside the ship and is first in line when kayaking is announced; she wants to encounter the ice up close. Her response gives the inscription a physical counterpart: what began as a sentence on a book becomes an experience of Antarctic ice, which she describes as blue, ancient, and cathedral-like. The phrase’s apparent mysticism is grounded in a sequence of tangible events—a book in a vest pocket, a missed stop, a ship, and an iceberg—and marks the point where Bernadette’s homeward plan gives way to a journey she embraces.