Source A: The rack that moved

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The storage room had movable racks on rails, each turned by a wheel at the end. Normally, one aisle opened as another closed. I had been sent to retrieve a box of textile samples, and I knew exactly where it stood: rack four, shelf C, second box from the left. The room smelled of cardboard and the dry cloth we used to cover the larger objects.

I turned the wheel, stepped into the aisle and reached for the box. Something clicked behind the lower shelf. The rack shifted towards me, only a short distance, but enough to catch my leg between its metal base and a fixed cabinet. The box fell open. Small squares of wool and cotton slid across my shoes. For a moment, the colours were the only thing I could see clearly.

I tried to move backwards. My knee would not turn. I pushed the rack with both hands, expecting the mechanism to behave as it always had. It moved a fraction and stopped. Somewhere in the rails, an obstruction held it in a position which none of the neat diagrams above the wheel described. I could reach the shelf, the cabinet handle and a paper label. I could not reach the wheel.

Upstairs, the photocopier began its familiar sequence of clunks. I called out between them, then over them. The machine finished and started again. The building contained people, but that did not mean the room contained an answer. My phone was in the coat I had left outside because the store was always warm. I remembered hanging it carefully on its hook. That small sensible action now seemed to belong to somebody who had misunderstood the whole day.

I stopped pushing. The pressure on my leg had become a separate clock, marking time without numbers. I counted what I could actually touch. The cabinet handle was loose enough to rattle. I struck it against the door, paused, then struck it again. The sound was thin, embarrassingly small after the force I had spent on the rack. I repeated it. This was the only part of the room which I could make behave differently.

After a while, the photocopier stopped halfway through a run. I heard footsteps, then a voice calling my name from beyond the store door. I answered too quickly and had to begin again. The rack remained against my leg. The samples lay beneath me, each square carefully catalogued and entirely useless. I kept one hand on the handle while the person outside asked where I was.

Source B: From 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place — Aron Ralston

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 10–11).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about the experience of being physically trapped.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.