Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer’s personal account of the 1996 Mount Everest Disaster. While Krakauer had multiple purposes for writing the book, there is one crucial purpose that stands out to me. By writing the book Krakauer was attempting to put the entire tragedy behind him in an effort to move on with his life and return to normalcy. Jon Krakauer was a journalist for “Outside” magazine. “Outside” decided to send him on a, “guided ascent of Mount Everest.” (Pg. XV) However, this expedition turned into a disaster. Including Krakauer, there were a total of 6 people within their expedition that reached the summit. During the trip back down the mountain four of them “perished in a rogue storm.” (Pg. XV) Therefore, this tragic event left
Chapter 7: In chapter 7 Krakauer talks about how Everest has changed from a professionals trek to anyone's trek. He explains that many inexperienced people have climbed Mount Everest with the help of sherpas and guides. He also mentions about the determination of Everest and how in some instances in history people who weren't allowed into Tibet or Nepal but they snuck in and managed to climb and summit Everest
Throughout the novel, the protagonist encounters many difficulties when trying to reach his goal of climbing Mount Everest. He encounters problems, from illnesses to deaths but most affectively the catastrophic weather. When Krakauer’s 5 friends die, including Rob Hall, Krakauer takes responsibility of the other climbers and helps them get through the tough weather safely. When they arrived to the base camps, many of the climbers gave up but Krakauer kept trying, he was motivated by Halls death to reach the top of Mount Everest. Krakauer finds ways to get around
The novel "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, he writes about an experience that changes his life when Outside magazine asks him to write an article about the commercialism of Mount Everest, he knew from that moment that he needed to climb the mountain. But of course his expedition does not go as expected. On May 10th Krakauer reaches the summit after a extremely stressful and treacherous trek up, but only to have to scale down the mountain with his team in one of the most dangerous seasons in the history of Everest. Many things went wrong when they came down the mountain and throughout this book, Jon attempts to evaluate what exactly happened and how things went wrong. He researches and figures out every person actions on that mountain. He has speculations about the failures of the expedition, and blames the catastrophe due to a series of little
An essential part of Krakauer's argument rests upon convincing the reader that he has the authority to accurately interpret the facts of McCandless’s life. His attempt begins in chapter fourteen, where his main focus is explaining why he thinks McCandless did not go to Alaska seeking death. Krakauer establishes his credibility by drawing upon his own experiences and comparing them to McCandless’s. “If something captured my undisciplined imagination, I pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession...” (134). This passion, he believes, is the same feeling McCandless felt while traveling across the country. At age 23, only a year younger than McCandless at the time he went to Alaska, Krakauer's preferred thrill was mountain climbing (135). During ...
In the article, “Finding Your Everest” by Robert Medina, the Romeros reveal that they believe that parents cannot go too far to support their children’s dreams. For example, Mr. Romero claims that he is fully aware of the risks Jordan might face while climbing/mountaineering, yet he believes that Jordan isn’t being forced to keep going, wants to keep going, and is nowhere near the point where he’s mentally and physically exhausted. This shows that Mr. Romero believes that parents cannot go too far because he mentions that it’s Jordan’s call on whatever expedition they go on. Also, he believes that they’re not doing anything super crazy because he feels that his son is perfectly wired for the conditions of mountain climbing. The biggest hint
In the memoir Within Reach: My Everest Story by Mark Pfetzer and Jack Galvin, the author Mark Pfetzer is faced with an extremely amazing yet scary challenge of climbing Mount Everest. Each event is the story has something to do with the nature that is around them at that moment but Pfetzer shows the readers that nature can be a way of life.
The day is unlike any other. The mail has come and lying at the bottom of the stack is the favored Outside magazine. The headline reads, “Exclusive Report: Lost in the Wild.” The cover speaks of a twenty four year old boy who “walked off into America’s Last Frontier hoping to make sense of his life.” The monotony of the ordinary day has now vanished from thought as Jon Krakauer’s captivating article runs through the mind like gasoline to an engine. The article is not soon forgotten, and the book Into the Wild is happened upon three years later. The book relates the full story of Christopher Johnson McCandless and how he left his family and friends after graduating college in order to find himself. Krakauer based the book off of his article on McCandless that was printed in January of 1993. From the time of writing the article to the printing of Into the Wild, Krakauer was obsessed with the tale of the boy who rid himself of society and later turned up dead in the Alaskan frontier. In the foreword of Into the Wild, Krakauer describes McCandless as “an extremely intense young man [who] possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence” and who was in deed searching for a “raw, transcendent experience” (i-ii). Krakauer is correct in assessing this conclusion about McCandless. This conclusion is seen throughout the book in many different assessments. Krakauer uses logical appeal, a comparison to his own life, and assumption to bring about his assessment of McCandless’ life.
...increasingly anxious “because “[he] had no radio nor any other means of communicating with the outside world “(140). Krakauer’s dire need of assistance helps him recognize that he needs contact with the outside world to not only survive but to relive his innate desire of belonging. Likewise, Krakauer states “ at such moments [climbing the mountain ] something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn’t the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard”(143) he implies the rush he gets from climbing mountains is not fully fulfilling and reliable; he needs part of the happiness to come from friendships and relationships.
When Jon Krakauer published a story about the death of a young man trekking into the Alaskan frontier in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine, the audience’s response to Christopher McCandless’s story was overwhelming. Thousand of letters came flooding in as a response to the article. Despite the claims, especially from the native Alaskans, questioning McCandless’s mental stability and judgement, it soon becomes clear that McCandless was not just "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier" (4). As Krakauer retells the life of Christopher McCandless and gives his own take on the controversy around McCandless’s death in Into The Wild, the reader also creates his own opinion on both McCandless and Krakauer’s argument. Krakauer
Imagine feeling guilty for making it out alive on a journey. In the nonfiction novel, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer, he documents his journey to the summits of Mount Everest and ultimately accuses himself of holding responsible for the disaster on the mountain. After realizing only one-fourth of the people that climbed to the summits on May 10, 1996, made it back down to base camp alive, Krakauer theorizes why that was so. He attributes most of the reason for the disaster to the erratic weather, along with hubris, who wanted the thought of leading a group to the mountain. Despite those reasons, there is no ultimate reason for the deaths documented in the book, but bottom line the climbers that died didn’t thoroughly comprehend the danger they were going to encounter as a consequence that contributed to the disaster.
Into Thin Air begins with author Jon Krakauer being hired to write for a magazine about the commercialism on Mount Everest. While researching, Krakauer’s curiosity and courage gets the best of him, and he decides to climb the mountain. After staying at the Base Camp for weeks, Krakauer and his group still have difficulty adjusting to the altitude and living conditions. Little do Krakauer and his teammates know, but the original adjustment to the mountain is going to be the least of their problems. During the journey up and down the mountain, the weather, altitude, physical exhaustion and climbing mistakes get the best of the group. In an effort to keep everyone safe, the climbers established a “turn around time” stating that any climber that
Jon Krakauer is a very unique author which his story creates many emotional and valuable lesson throughout the story.
Everest is an unbelievable mountain that has taken the lives of a number of the greatest climbers in history. It was my job to ensure that clients make it up that treacherous mountain safely. My name is Rob Hall. I was the main guide and cofounder of a climbing company called Adventure Consultants. My friend, Gary Ball, and I used to be professional climbers. Together we succeeded in climbing to the highest summit on each of the seven continents in seven months. This was our greatest achievement. After this, we decided to start our own company guiding clients up large mountains. In May 1992, we successfully led six clients to the summit of Everest. Unfortunately, Gary died of cerebral edema in October 1993 during an attempt on the world’s sixth-tallest mountain. He died in my arms and the next day I buried him in a crevasse. Despite the pain that his death had caused me, I continued guiding for our company and eventually led thirty-nine climbers to the summit of Everest.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is an adventurous story about a Mount Everest expedition gone wrong. The journey up the mountain is like previous trips, but once they reach the top of the mountain all hell breaks loose. A massive storm traps climbers stuck on the top of the mountain with little to no oxygen, no shelter, and nowhere to go. Oxygen depletion alone can kill someone and make them vulnerable to novice mistakes. Krakauer notices when he is lacking oxygen as he says, “The world beyond the rubber mask was stupendously vivid but seemed not quite real, as if a movie were being projected in slow motion across the front of my goggles. I felt drugged, disengaged, thoroughly insulated from external stimuli” (179). HACE, a medical condition in which the brain swells, is caused by a lack of oxygen and can kill people within 48 hours if not treated. With a lack of shelter, the climbers are exposed to Artic-like conditions.
Through journal entries, highlighted passages, stories of people’s encounters, and personal experiences, author Jon Krakauer attempts to reconstruct the life of a young transcendentalist man named Chris Johnson McCandless in the biographical novel Into the Wild. McCandless was a 24-year-old young man who completely severed his connection to the world, his family, and all of his tangible possessions in hope to survive off the land in Alaska. In the two years that led to his Alaskan Odyssey McCandless created a new life for himself and lived by the name Alexander Supertramp, in hope to leave his old life behind. Krakauer starts his novel “Into the Wild” by bluntly revealing to the audience that he had only survived 113 days and his remains were found two weeks after preceding his death. Rather than focusing on McCandless death, Krakauer focused on his life. Although Krakauer is biased, he proves to be a credible biographer and proves the assertions he made in his authors note.