Internal And Internal Conflict In Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

In Jon Krakauer’s book, “Into Thin Air”, there were a significant amount of deaths involved. Eight people lost their lives on the most disastrous Everest expedition in history. Was anyone responsible for these deaths? This question has many answers based on different people’s opinions. I think that the person that is held accountable for their deaths should be Jon Krakauer. He was selfish and didn’t do much to help others when they needed it.

Krakauer was fascinated by mountain climbing from a young age. “How would it feel, I wondered over and over, to be on that thumbnail-thin summit ridge, worrying over the storm clouds building on the horizon, hunched against the wind and dunning cold, contemplating the horrible drop on either side?” Asked Krakauer. He had received a book as a child that was full of information about mountain climbing, and he was fascinated. Krakauer was glued to his book for the next decade, until he finally decided to put his dreams into action. When he was twenty

With a wind chill of a hundred degrees below zero and a rapidly diminishing supply of oxygen, travelers are ascending their way to attain their ultimate destination, the summit of Everest. Jon Krakauer confronts a countless number of physical and psychological obstacles with his comrades along the ceaseless expedition. Into Thin Air is a reflection of physical and psychological violence because of the treacherous environment, varying experience level of each climber, advertisement of Everest, and the mental conflict within each individual.

Before reading this book, I had already been aware of the countless dangers of Mt. Everest. Last summer I read a book about Mt. Everest much like this one in the state that both were spoken through personal accounts, and both used constant detail to express the horrible and painful experiences that both authors had to go through. This prior knowledge helped better my understanding of this book because I was aware of the common occurrences that can take place while climbing Mt. Everest, and the gruesome circumstances that go with it. During the eighth chapter, readers become aware of a horrible condition that a character is dealing with. “By the time he arrived at the tents late that afternoon Ngawang was delirious, stumbling like a drunk, and coughing up pink, blood-laced froth” (Krakauer 113).

Most of the novel is focussed on Jon Krakauer’s point of view leading him to use many personal pronouns and write in the first person. A large portion of the book is written in 3rd person, however. This occurs when Krakauer goes into detail about the other climbers and their accounts of the story. These are narrated making it seem like Krakauer was an observer even though many of the times he was not. The author achieves many different view throughout this novel because of how many shifts in perspective and character there are. This leads the reader to form their own opinions as the author shows contradicting opinions

After reaching the summit, Krakauer said how he saw the storm approaching. He decided to leave after consulting with the others climbers about the situation. However, the other climbers chose to stay. The choice he made was a life or death decision, in which he didn’t know about at the time. After a while, when the storm hit, he and a few others were a few hundred feet away from the tents, which Hutchinson states “The blowing spindrift felt like a sandblaster or something, I could only go out for fifteen minutes at a time, before I became too cold and had to return to the tent” (Krakauer 217).

Krakauer has mastered simplistic yet intricate all at the same time. This is why they chose Jon Krakauer to go onto the mountain to write and document the struggle of life at 29,000 feet for the newspaper back in Seattle. As a young man in good physical shape who had always had it out to climb Everest, it was fitting for Jon to be chosen. The climb is a multiple month long journey. It starts with the slow journey up into the altitude and waiting for acclimatization there at the first base camp. There are four base camps in total. One being the lowest in height, four is the highest. Once you slowly work your way from

Jon Krakauer, a journalist, was given the life changing opportunity to climb Everest by Outside magazine. He was originally told that he would have to stay at the bottom of the Mountain, at Base Camp, a large encampment contain shelter, supplies, and medical equipment. However, Jon persuaded the magazine to fund him on a guided climb to the summit.

Nevertheless, Krakauer hoped to conserve what little he had and asked his friend, Andy Harris, to turn his regulator down. Unfortunately, Krakauer soon realized that “Harris, in his hypoxically impaired state, had mistakenly cranked the valve open to full flow, draining the tank.” (Krakauer) With the declining amount of oxygen reaching the brain, climbers have trouble performing even the easiest tasks. Harris demonstrates the importance of using supplemental oxygen for his own health, but also the dangers it may have on his teammates. Harris’s hypoxic mistake caused Krakauer to panic and he slowly suffocated until he descended and retrieved a fresh tank of oxygen. Although Harris was not aware of his mistake, the lack of oxygen was changing the way he thought and reacted in certain situations, therefore posing a danger to his friends and teammates while in such an intense landscape. Andrew Bisharat, in his article “What’s the Big Deal About Climbing Everest Without Oxygen?” interviews former climbers of Everest and details their experiences while battling the bitter conditions. Bisharat

The book Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer in mainly about groups of people summiting everest. Jon writes for a magazine called Outside. In the end, the magazine company decides to send him up Everest with a group of people led by a Rob Hall, a well respected expedition guide. Jon took a plane to Nepal and eventually made his way to base camp. Every couple of days they would hike up to a new camp and then hike back down to base camp. There are four camps and each time they would hike to a higher camp to get used to the pressure. In chapter 9, they were going to hike from camp 2 to camp 3, and they ran into a powdery snow storm. Rob told everyone to get down over the radio to prevent further injury. In chapter 14 Jon makes it to the summit and then left rather quickly. He encountered many other people pushing for the summit on his way down. While on his way down a storm comes, Beck Weathers refuses to come with him and waits for Rob, and Jon makes it back to Camp 4 with Andy Harris. He wakes up the next morning only to find out that many people have not come down yet, most notably, Rob Hall. Most of Rob’s Client were already at camp 4 because they never went to he summit or even further down at this point. Towards the end of the book, Rob Hall says

Nature inspires us to accomplish big things, challenge ourselves and enlightens the desire to adventure. “Into Thin Air”, a short story by Jon Krakauer is about the expedition of climbing Mt. Everest. In the story Krakauer wrote

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer shares Jon’s first hand experience of one of the most dangerous seasons of climbing on Mount Everest. Krakauer himself experienced the tragedies of 1996 on Everest because he was writing an article for Outdoor Magazine about the commercialization of Everest. Multiple guides during this season suffered from having an over-abundance of pride which often led them to making questionable decisions that ultimately led to the deaths of not only climbers but also guides. Hubris found among Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, and Anatoli Boukreev helped cause the tragic events to transpire on the 1996 Everest expedition.

Into Thin Air is a nonfiction book documenting Jon Krakauer’s expedition to the summit of Mt Everest. The book contains aspects that a typical quest story includes: it has one motif, the characters are inexperienced and learn something about themselves, and the team faces challenges and trials on route. However the book also differs from a typical quest story because it makes the reader question morality and many of the main characters die. Into Thin Air has characteristics of both a quest story and a narrative with a complex allegory.

In the year 1953, late May, two climbers finally reached the summit of their expeditions. Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay gazed down from the tallest summit on earth at the valleys surrounding them and sighed a breath of relief, as they were the first people to ever ascend the beast known as Everest. 46 years later Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” tells of the harrowing and demanding road to the peak of Everest. I bet you are probably thinking what would prompt these smart men and women to put themselves into such a hard and narrowly survivable situation. In this paper we will go over a couple of the reasons that causes people to climb Everest. First personal achievement, Secondly glory and fame, and Third Adrenaline rush or The pull

Jon Krakauer creates tension through-out into thin air. “ To aid the taiwanese climbers, who were by then barely alive with great difficulty and considerable risk to their own lives,” he foreshadows to create tension. This specific section in this book creates tension because