The Responsibility Of Death In Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air

Furthermore, another example is when Chris’s former co-worker at McDonalds talks about Chris’s time as an employee when he says, “He always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you got on him”(40). This quote describes Chris’s work ethic while he worked at McDonalds, which is very surprising considering past reviews about him. However, he did not work very hard and did not to seem to care one bit about his job at McDonalds because his focus was all on Alaska. Chris’s arrogance is shown in this quote because he has given up on society. He just doesn’t care anymore and all he wants to do is go to Alaska. He is completely ignoring the fact that people are living normal lives and that not everything is about his adventure. Also, Chris is being very selfish because people that are actually a part of society who need things, but he is ignoring everybody that he does not associate with. That works when you are in the wild with no responsibility but in the real world, Chris needed have a sense of urgency. He was ignorant toward society because he does not think and function like everyone else that he was around. Since Chris didn’t fit into society he decided to run away from everything. Krakauer message is present because Chris couldn’t fit into society because he can’t handle responsibility. He could not fit into society and Chris was so ignorant toward society, so he just left the whole thing behind to go start a new life.

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

Author’s Goal: Jon Krakauer’s goal is to provide an accurate account of the Mt. Everest disaster, and describe the other events and effects the climb had leading up to it. I think he reached his goal because he was able to connect with the reader in many different ways, and he got his message across well. He provides vivid descriptions, details, and facts, all while establishing that he is credible. The author did convince me of his point of view. Now, I understand that climbing Everest is very difficult, and there are numerous challenges people must face and overcome during an expedition.

Krakauer worked a dead end job that was going to get him nowhere, until one day he built up the courage to quit his job, leave his home town, and make his dreams a reality. He drove from his home, with nothing but his car, and two hundred dollars to his name. Krakauer felt that by climbing The Devil’s Thumb, he would find himself amongst the frozen rocks and deep crevasses. He thought that if he could not climb this mountain, then his life meant nothing. He strove to be respected in the eyes of others, and he thought that if he did this, then he would

“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).

He explains how he was torn between quitting his job, which was necessary for the income, or continuing to venture into the wild, searching for new places to climb. Krakauer “never had any doubt that climbing the Devil’s Thumb would transform his life. How could it not?”(135). This technique of rhetorical questioning requires the reader to think of Krakauer’s options and aims to make the readers predict where Krakauer his headed, leaving his job in search for climbing opportunities. After Krakauer clues the reader about his future plans, he then goes on to tell them of the day he quit his job. He writes the next few sentences in problem-solution format, noting “...after nine hours of humping two-by-tens and driving sixteen-penny nails, I told my boss I was quitting”(135,136). This concise problem-solution sentence format notifies the reader that Krakauer was sure of his decision to quit his job. He did not need much time to think about this life-changing decision, assuring the readers that he has been waiting for this lifestyle of adventure and freedom. Simply put, Krakauer and McCandless both operate on whims and are sure of their

One of the most important qualities that an elite climber must have is leadership. The elite climbers and guides must be able to meet a number of new people that are strangers to each other and build some sense of a team. Krakauer does not have a strong background in leading groups or building comradery, which is key for a climb like Everest. Krakauer says himself, “In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern” (40). He also mentions how the actions of one climber can “affect the welfare of the entire team” (40). The type of group he climbed with on

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.

In the author's notes he put “Through most of the book, I have tried--and largely succeeded, I think to--to minimize my authorial presence. But let the reader be warned: I interrupt McCandless’s story with fragments of a narrative drawn from my own youth. I do so in the hope that my experiences will throw some oblique light on the enigma of Chris McCandless”(Krakauer 2). By telling us that he will add some stories of his own make us realize that Krakauer has some relation with McCandless and it make us think that this book is more believable. In the book when he tells us that Chris just died for a simple mistake and tries to relate it to himself by telling the story of how he started to realized that going into the wilderness will change his life he emphasizes“I would go to Alaska, ski inland from the sea across thirty miles of glacial ice, and ascend this mighty nordwand. I decide, moreover, to do it alone. ” Just like McCandless, Krakauer had a lot in common with him, they both went into the wild of Alaska, which gives a lot of experience to krakauer to talk about McCandless death. In order for Krakauer to make McCandless not a crazy kid he made some other similarities between McCandless and some other people that died, with a lot of characteristics similar to McCandless and himself. Krakauer is the ideal person to criticate

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

When Krakauer first meets his team he thinks to himself, “I wasn’t sure what to make of my fellow clients. In outlook and experience they were nothing like the hard-core climbers with whom I usually went into the mountains (Krakuaer 39).” Krakuaer represents a sense of arrogance to his team because he had been on other mountain climbing expeditions and most of everyone else on his team had little to no experience climbing. He is implying that he is one of the best climbers on his team. Another time Krakuaer states the incompetence of other clients and groups on the expedition: “The presence of the Taiwanese on Everest was a matter of grave concern to most of the other expeditions on the mountain. There was a very real fear that the Taiwanese would suffer a calamity that would compel other expeditions to come to their aid, risking further lives, to say nothing of jeopardizing the opportunity for other climbers to reach the summit” (122 Krakauer). Krakauer thinks that the Taiwanese would prevent people from reaching the mountain because all the other expeditions would have to come to their aid, further putting more peoples lives in danger. Krakauer shows pride in his ability in climbing, causing him to be

Krakauer continues to use emotions through different language choices reflective in varieties of figures of speech to connect his experiences towards his audience, through his inclusion of guilt. Krakauer heavily focuses on the emotional appeal towards survivor's guilt and reflecting this emotional appeal towards his audience in his linguistic choices. The heavy guilt and wondering are directed towards the unknown of Andy Harris, haunting Krakauer continuously. Krakauer uses guilt to say, “My actions - or failures to act - played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris” (283). Krakauer emphasizes pauses to admit to the guilt he feels for not understanding what happened to Andy, as well as to think about the interactions he had to comprehend why the death has occurred. The use of figures of speech through pauses and emphasizing his “failures to act” shows how Krakauer is trying to understand the death of a significant figure in his life. The uncertainty of views when tracing his steps on how Harris’s death results from the small blame upon only Krakauer, rather than on the other dangerous factors. He continues to affirm his guilt, “...the stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden

1. Relying on the book chapter for perception and decision making, describe the role of the perception biases, “shortcuts”, and errors that the climbers — as individuals and as a group— made during the 1996 expedition to Mount Everest. Describe at least 5. How these biases, “shortcuts,” and errors did contribute to the tragedy?

Through this technique, Krakauer helps to develop Chris’s personality and t conveys the author’s purpose of tell McCandless’s story.