Into Thin Air John Krakauer

Speaker:Jon Krakauer, An author and mountaineer. He is well known for his writings about the outdoors. As a young man his primary focus was mountaineering which eventually lead to him becoming a writer

She was a rich client who filed daily dispatches for NBC Interactive Media en route. She always

The main character and protagonist, Jon Krakauer, is a United States client and journalist who is on an expedition to climb to the summit of Mt. Everest. He takes the reader through his horrifying experiences on the mountain, including the death of his team, lack of oxygen, and horrible weather. The conflict in this novel is an internal and external conflict. It is an internal conflict of man vs. himself. Jon Krakauer, had to go through mental states of giving up and dying on the mountain

“A trans-like state settles over your efforts, the climb becomes a clear eyed dream.” Stated Krakauer in The Devils Thumb. Mountain climbing has become a popular interest for thrill-seekers in modern times. It is an immensely challenging activity, involving strength, determination, and the proper mindset. There are many accounts of mountain climbers heroically reaching the summit of mountains, but none more striking than that of Everest and The Devils Thumb. These are gut wrenching, first hand accounts of some of the greatest feats performed in mountain climbing history, although they are each different in their own way. Krakauer was climbing to find himself amongst the frozen rocks and chest deep snow, and Weihnmayer climbed to push his limits, and to accomplish what many thought to be the impossible.

“As a youth, [Krakauer was] told, [he] was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. [He] disappointed [his] father…. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in [him]…confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured [his] undisciplined imagination, [he] pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession, and from the age of seventeen until [his] late twenties that something was mountain climbing” (134).

Despite his impressive record he had never attempted anything close to the scale of Everest, whose summit is at an extremely dangerous altitude. He even admits to his relative inexperience with high altitude saying, “Truth be told, I’d never been higher than 17,200 feet--not even as high as Everest Base Camp”(28). Krakauer also mentions how he has gotten out of shape over the years partially because of the lack of climbing in his life, making him even less prepared for the assent. Krakauer shows a definite fear of such a high mountain, referring to climbers who have perished in the past. He states that, “Many of those who died had been far stronger and possessed vastly more high-altitude experience than I.” (28). Even though Krakauer’s experience may be more relevant to the Everest assent than some of the other tourist climbers, it is nowhere near the level needed to be considered an elite climber.

Mount Everest is 29,092 feet tall. Imagine climbing this mountain with little to no experience. Would you survive? In the nonfiction novel Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer and his recruited crews try climbing this mountain. With many deaths along the way to the top, readers are quick to blame characters in the book. However, character stands out from the rest: Krakauer. In the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer is the most responsible for the other character’s deaths because he recruited and dragged along inexperienced mountain climbers, pushed them harder than they should’ve been pushed, and watched them suffer.

The entire journey up the mountain is full of danger. You constantly have to worry about the oxygen you are getting and people around you are dying. The air is thin and if there is any air, it’s contaminated. You have to worry about getting the disease H.A.P.E. You have to worry about your health 24/7. You have to get past impossible obstacles. You just have to be strong. Climbing the mountain is an endless, painful battle. No matter what is happening outside of the mountain, on Mount Everest all that matters is Survival.

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

I don’t think that Krakauer should have been the person to write the book, since he was so opinionated on the subject. I think the book would have been better if it was less about how great he was and more about what actually happened in his life. To be fair, it did have a few facts about his life before he died, although maybe more would have been better. Krakauer’s opinion on McCandless is definitely different than my own, but that’s normal. Opinions aren’t all the same.

Have you ever wondered what kind of hardships come with climbing the tallest mountain in the world before? Expectantly, the book Peak by Roland Smith and the movie Everest have a lot of similarities with some exceptionally prominent differences. From personal conflict and character conflict to the general aspect of climbing Mt. Everest, the book and the movie explore all different types of similarities and differences. Being similar, in both the movie and the book, the mountain always decides. The morals were constant and everyone experiences the same deal in similar ways. One significant difference came between Peak, the main character in the book, and Rob(5th summit attempt), the main character in the movie.

The Harvard Business School case Mount Everest – 1996 narrates the events of May 11, 1996, when 8 people-including the two expedition leaders— died during a climb to the tallest mountain in the world (five deaths are described in the case, three border police form India also died that day). This was dubbed the “deadliest day in the mountain’s history” (at least until April 18, 2014). The survivors and many analysts have tried to decipher what went wrong that day, find an underlying cause, and learn from the event.

Climbing Mount Everest is a bad idea because many people have died. And it is also dangerous. If you climb it there is probably 90% that you might die.According to the text book on page 420 it says “about 2,000 of them have succeeded, But 1800 or more have died”. This shows that many of the people have died and that it is risky . Also in Peak it tells us about how cold the mountain is and how some people have died because of the cold weather.

Many people try to climb Mount Everest. Some fail and some succeed. Climbing the tallest mountain in the world has several pros and cons. Several people and different organizations try fixing the cons.

This novel, Into Thin Air, has impacted me in a multitude of ways. The first being the surprise that I felt throughout the book. All of the deaths and mishaps showed me that climbing Everest is not as easy and as simple as I thought it was. Krakauer also crashed a wave of sorrow on to me, as I felt bad for all of the people who lost family and friends in the disaster, or experienced it. Along with this, I was also impacted because the author was very informative about Everest and its history. He delved deep into the past beliefs about the mountain, the measurements, and different ways people have ascended the mountain. Before reading Into Thin Air I was very much clueless about any history or information surrounding the mountain.