Heroism In Into Thin Air

In order to continue climbing Everest, many aspects of climbing need to be improved before more people endanger their lives to try and reach the roof of the world. The guides have some areas that need the most reform. During the ascension of Everest the guides made a plethora mistakes that seemed insignificant but only aided in disaster. The guides first mistake is allowing “any bloody idiot [with enough determination] up” Everest (Krakauer 153). By allowing “any bloody idiot” with no climbing experience to try and climb the most challenging mountain in the world, the guides are almost inviting trouble. Having inexperienced climbers decreases the trust a climbing team has in one another, causing an individual approach to climbing the mountain and more reliance on the guides. While this approach appears fine, this fault is seen in addition to another in Scott Fischer’s expedition Mountain Madness. Due to the carefree manner in which the expedition was run, “clients [moved] up and down the mountain independently during the acclimation period, [Fischer] had to make a number of hurried, unplanned excursions between Base Camp and the upper camps when several clients experienced problems and needed to be escorted down,” (154). Two problems present in the Mountain Madness expedition were seen before the summit push: the allowance of inexperienced climbers and an unplanned climbing regime. A third problem that aided disaster was the difference in opinion in regards to the responsibilities of a guide on Everest. One guide “went down alone many hours ahead of the clients” and went “without supplemental oxygen” (318). These three major issues: allowing anyone up the mountain, not having a plan to climb Everest and differences in opinion. All contributed to the disaster on Everest in

Regionalism is a key element throughout this novel. Mount Everest is one of the only actual settings in the book, and is crucial to the storyline. It is important to know that the mountain is the tallest on Earth; this will help the reader understand how treacherous the climb will be for the author and his crew. From this passage, we learn that although Krakauer always thought that climbing Everest would be one of the biggest and accomplished moments of his life, but his experience was completely destroyed by what the reader assumes as a sort of tragedy. This gives the reader a negative view of the mountain throughout the book because of the disaster that will eventually occur on

Written by Jon Krakauer, “Into Thin Air” tells the story of a Mt. Everest expedition. Doug Hansen, Yasuko Namba, Rob Hall, Mike Groom, and Beck Weathers were on a mission to reach the summit of Mount Everest; the highest point on Earth. Doug Hansen and Rob Hall passed away early in the journey, when Rob valiantly attempts to save his partner, Hansen. When the group split up, Groom got word that Weathers and Namba were in need of help. Groom left Beck and Yasuko for dead. Weathers and Namba stuck together, but only Weathers survived.

In the book “Into thin air” by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer sought to report and write about his climb up mount everest. He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he did not and could not have predicted the barriers and conflicts that were inflicted upon him, by the mountain and it’s atmosphere. Due to these barriers and conflicts, it would be naive to say that the main conflict wasn’t man vs nature. Nevertheless, Krakauer had the worst experience of his life, climbing and fighting against the physical and mental effects of Mount Everest.

On May 10, 1996, nine people perished on Mt. Everest. Jon Krakauer, a writer from Outside magazine, was there to witness the events and soon after write the book, Into Thin Air, chronicling the disaster. Jon Krakauer is not only the writer and narrator of Into Thin Air but is also one of the main characters. Originally Outside Magazine planned to send Krakauer to Everest in order for him to write a story for the magazine. The climb was completely financed by the magazine with one of the leading Everest guide groups led by Rob Hall, an elite climber. Krakauer divides the people on the mountain into two main categories, tourist and elite. The elite being guides and Sherpas like Hall, Harris and Ang Dorje,

The journey is painful and boring and he has to be strong so he can continue on his way to find his treasure. On the other note, Krakauer has to face very similar physical and mental challenges also. His mental challenge is having to see all the death and destruction on the way up and down from Everest. As Krakauer added “Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.” (233) On the way up he finds disturbing dead bodies of people who did not make it.

However the real reason is different from the stated reason. Krakauer is writing an article for Outsider Magazine and wants to document the journey while fulfilling a childhood dream to reach the summit of. Along the way there are various challenges and trials. During the course of the trip they had to deal with frostbite, a major storm that is fatal to many, and results in having no one to lead them. Throughout all the ordeals the group faces, only a few get away from the trip unscathed. The expedition has many inexperienced climbers, Krakauer states “Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics and others with a shaky hold on reality.” This quote shows that there are many people who come to climb Everest with very little experience. These inexperienced climbers contribute to the 16 fatalities on that expedition. Overall these elements of Into Thin Air are similar to qualities that a quest story would

Into Thin Air, a book about the Everest disaster in 1996, represents the human experience because Earth's elements are impartial and cannot comprehend ethnicity, gender or culture. People from various backgrounds were flocking to Nepal, with little in common, besides their hope of reaching the summit of Mount Everest. The 29,029 foot mountain, was incidentally forcing all who were facing it, to go through a similar journey of severe sickness, emotional crisis, extreme self-reliance and deadly encounters. The book speaks to all humanity because emotional and physical struggles are common experiences, diminished by human spirit and self-reliance. A true example of self-determination, Beck Weathers, was left for dead beside Yasuko Namba after

In the Spring of 1996, David Breashears was one of the people on Mount Everest the days of the storm that killed multiple people. Fortunately, he was not stuck in the midst of the full ferocious storm like Rob Hall’s and Scott Fischer’s teams. Since the May 1996 incident, David Breashears has been busy doing what he came to Everest in the first place to do, film. It took years for Breashears to decide to make a documentary about what happened. It’s something that you have to think of; Breashears, a recipient of 4 National Emmy Awards for achievements in filmmaking, didn’t even think of making a film out of what happened. After the 1996 incident, his team regrouped and reached the summit of Everest on May 23 and passed the body of Rob Hall and

The Devil’s Thumb and Everest are both memoirs about the expeditions of mountain climbers and their struggle whilst on their journey. John Krakauer, a man who got up and left his life behind in hopes of a change in the way he lived earned a new perspective through his solo climb of the Devil’s Thumb and Erik Weihenmayor, a blind man who took people by surprise by, with the help of others, climbing Mount Everest and showing the world that disadvantages can sometimes be used to accomplish big. These two men overcame their struggles and achieved great things. Weihenmayor and Krakauer used different tones, organizational structures, and wrote about the perspectives they had to influence the central ideas of their memoirs.

Through the excursion of Dyer’s team, they overcame many struggles, one of them being during their last lap, where “through the desolate summits swept raging intermittent gusts of the terrible Antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half sentient musical piping”. (Lovecraft, 280) With that said, predominantly scientists and researchers, are often compelled to form research through travelling through different places across the world, causing them to be thoughtless of taking into consideration the many obstacles they need to overcome. Unfortunately, this lack of comprehension of the harsh conditions, causes many scientists to either pass away or be critically ill, as they were not emotionally or physically prepared for the struggles. When looking in a factual life scope, many individuals who travel to Mount Everest are preparing themselves for this adventure as they are curious to find what the world has to offer them, when they are standing so close to the

Multiple oversights occurred on the 1996 expedition to Everest, both due to human error and natural causes. When asked to write an article about Everest, excited Krakauer sees this as an opportunity to fulfill his long lifelong dream to climb the mountain. Though all does not go as planned. For instance, at the summit, Harris turns Krakauer’s oxygen tank to full flow instead of turning it off like the journalist had requested (10). Later, an undesired storm strikes and wounds and takes the lives many of the climbers(). A small number survived and Krakauer was thrilled as he was overjoyed nothing went even worse. Indicating when Krakauer went through the hazardous perils of human life he learned to respect it more. As he then to focused on

In the non-fictional short stories “The World’s Highest Mountain” and “A Mountain of Garbage”, there were many negative impacts climbers had on Mount Everest. Climbers may have different impacts towards climbing Everest and these impacts may include risks. Climbing mount everest in a hard task and not one for everyone.

Imagine for a moment that you wanted to go on a trip to a place you've been wishing and pleading to go to and finally you’re ready to go, only to have your trip canceled because some people thought the trip was unsafe.Well this might be a possible reality for some mountaineers hoping to reach Mt.Everest’s summit.Due to some tragedies that have taken place on the climb like the avalanche on April 18, 2014 which claimed the lives of sixteen Nepalese guides and others, debates on whether the journey to the Summit of Mt.Everest should be permitted have appeared(Source 1).So the question that remains is do the accomplishments made climbing the mountain outweigh the risk?I believe that the accomplishment of reaching the summit outweighs the risk

In the article Anatoli Boukreev (Responds to krakauer), Anatoli Boukreev opposes the topic of defending himself for the misunderstandings John Krakauer had mentioned about his decisions and actions on Mount Everest. He states that Krakauer lacked closeness of what really did happen during the events of summit day. Boukreev has had twenty years of “high altitude climbing experience” (Boukreev 1), he has gone up Mount Everest three times in his career of climbing but in total he has climbed twelve high altitude mountains. According to Boukreev, “I have summited seven of the world’s fourteen mountains over 8,000 meters of elevation, all of those without the use of supplementary oxygen” (1). Based on his experience of climbing, he was concerned