Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer

The novel, Into Thin Air, is written by Jon Krakauer. The novel was published by Villard Books in 1997 and copyrighted in 1997 by Jon Krakauer. It is considered a non-fiction novel and has also been made into a movie in 2015. It has 301 pages.

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.

As an experienced mountaineer, Krakauer’s childhood dream had been to climb Mount Everest. This lingering dream was triggered with a full blast when he accepted the offer of being on Rob Hall’s leaded expedition as a reporter for Outside magazine. Krakauer had to change his attitude from a free-willed climber to an obedient client on the team and was concerned about his other fellow clients when they were first acquainted. “ In outlook and experience they were nothing like the hard-core climbers with whom I usually went into the mountains”. (Krakauer 39) In previous years, Krakauer had always climbed alone or with some trusted friends. He came to realize that one must completely rely on the guide instead of other clients on a guided expedition. After meeting the other clients, Krakauer develops a sense of superiority as he is one of the most experienced climbers on the team. It shocked him when the author found out that clients Beck Weathers, Stuart Hutchinson, and Lou Kasischke never tried on their mountaineering boots beforehand and Hutchinson even failed to notice his crampons (steel spikes that are attached to the bottom of boots to help with ice climbing) did not fit his boots. As the expedition drags on, Krakauer became more acquainted with the rest of his team members and has a change in mindset. “I learned that between the demands of their families and their high-powered careers, few of my fellow clients had had the opportunity to go climbing more than once or twice in the previous year…. But maybe I’m just being a snob, I scolded myself.” Krakauer admits through this context that he is deeply concerned about his inexperienced teammates although he realized that it is not up to him to worry about such things. He came to realize that although many other clients were extremely unexperienced, their goal to summit the

Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air is an autobiographical book that does more than tell a story; it voices out the true definition of pain, strife, and hopelessness, exemplifying the all known rule of survival of the fittest.

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.

As much as I thought that the first chapter should have been removed, the book, overall, changed the way I viewed Mount Everest. The novel helps to understand that there is much more than just climbing up and down. For instance, when Krakauer talks about expenses and equipment, he says, “That autumn the ministry raised the permit fee again to fifty thousand dollars plus ten thousand dollars for each additional climber.” This shows that there is an extensive amount of planning and equipment to be covered. Krakauer also tells that a storm on Everest can be much more deadly than a storm at sea level. At the end of chapter twenty, he says, “Brice Herrod is now presumed dead, the twelfth casualty of the season.” Its descriptions like these which make me view Everest as both a great challenge, but also a potential deathtrap.

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.

Into Thin Air tells the story of the tragedy where in 1996, several climbers died on the slopes of Mt. Everest. This was all witnessed by Jon Krakauer, a journalist and one of the climbers who reached the summit that year. Krakauer and the team he climbs with becomes separated through a series of accidents and a change in weather resulting in five teammates dead. Scott Fischer leads an expedition as well, and in that expedition he also loses climbers on the storm, including himself. Krakauer narrates the affairs of the expeditions and attempts to explain how the climbers could have been caught on the mountain when they could have turned and remained safe. He also communicates how he played a role in the events.

Jon Krakauer creates tension and suspense throughout Into Thin Air by the order of events when he starts the book mid-story. In this time before he goes back to the actual beginning, Krakauer gives the reader a brief summary of his summiting, and when he starts down. At the end he leaves the readers on a cliffhanger, he said

Vulnerability impacts any individual throughout each new and interactive experience. To become vulnerable is to open up to the consequences of frantic outcomes. Individuals will lead to vulnerability to cope with a trauma that has created a solemn change to a lifestyle. Jon Krakauer explains how the trauma of Mt. Everest changed his outlooks on reality, through different coping mechanisms. Krakauer uses his writing in his book, Into Thin Air, to cope with the guilt of surviving the terror that occurred upon Mt. Everest, as well as to understand what actions caused each outcome. Within an excerpt from Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer is reflective towards his audience of how vulnerability shaped the experiences upon Mt. Everest to cope with the

Title: “Into thin Air”, by John Krakauer Date of publication: Published in 1997 Mt. Everest during the 1996 Mt. Everest Disaster in a dangerous rogue storm (April –May) Characters: John Krakauer: narrator of the novel, Outside Magazine helped paid for his journey and was one of the members who ascended Mt. Everest. Rob Hall: part of the Adventure Consultants, helped guide Krakauer up the mountain, very strong climber, and is always there for others, no matter what. Ang Dorje Sherpa: likes Rob Hall, helps anyone who is in need, even when it is at his expense.

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.

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

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is one of the most well-known mountaineering books to this day. Like numerous mountaineering books the story is about the hardship the characters face while focusing on the main goal of climbing Mt. Everest the highest mountain in the world. Krakauer a very famous author writes about the expedition he went on for outside magazine in 1996. The story reveals the biggest disaster on Everest to this day. Overall, the novel is great and I would highly recommend it to a friend. However this is a great story I am still not sure how this book could relate to the AP environmental science course curriculum. Krakauer slightly confronts the negative environmental impact climbers have done to Everest due to the fact the mountain

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.