"Phil felt strangely fearless. He watched the ocean rotating up at him and thought: There's nothing more I can do." Analyze these feelings. What is the author's purpose of including them?

The feeling invoked by the author is to show the freedom of  accepting of fate by the narrator.

Explanation:

The feelings described here are numerous in small amount of time. The feeling of the narrator is at first described to be strangely fearless.

This makes one think that there is something to fear which is why it has become fearless.

But then the author describes the feeling by the use of imagery and we understand that Phil is in fact drowning and these emotions are his understanding that he will now not survive at all.

There is no chance to survive so he accepts his fate and feels strangely free.

cabeza de vaca was an spanish explorer and n his long exploration of 11,000.km. from florida to present-day mexico, he went through a series of calamities and setbacks that only added to his deeds. he applied his religious creed with the humanist idea, always current and universal, that all men were equal before god and destiny without any discrimination. as an explorer, he became a slave to the tipinoga, then his shaman pointer, later and after an operation of heart to an indian (from which both came alive) he achieved stardom and became a hero followed by a crowd that professed unusual respect and admiration.