Krakauer needed a guide for going up Mount Everest. A professional. He found a man who in five years, guided thirty-nine clients to the top. His name was Hall. He said that his company was the world leader in Everest climbing and charged $65,000 a person. Two days after arriving at Kathmandu Krakauer takes a helicopter…
In Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, follows the heroes journey of Jon and his fellow mountaineers as they experience trials on the highest peak in the world Mt. Everest. In the spring of 1996 a group of guided mountaineers lead by Rob Hall and his company Adventure Consultants. On that trip was Jon Krakauer a journalist with Outside magazine, who was writing an article about the rising number of commercial guided Everest. That trip turned deadly, when a monsoon turned into a record blizzard and trapped 13 people on the mountain and 8 experienced mountaineers died. During the tough period of time of getting used to the thin air and lack of oxygen, Jon finds himself deprived of oxygen at camp 4. "The ration of misery to pleasure was greater by…
Perhaps there is one thing everyone needs to feel accomplished whether that is earning a Master’s Degree or maybe even climbing a mountain. John Krakauer’s and Erik Weihenmeyer’s memoirs of their mountain climbing experiences presented in “The Devils Thumb” and “Everest” show different perspectives and different reasons on why they set out to climb these towering mountains. Both hikers followed their dream while not caring about the countenance of others. The assiduous men set out to climb two different mountains and they both had earned a different outcome out of their accomplishment through the use of tone, perspective, and word choice. Climbing these mountains, one hiker was expecting the accomplishment to change his life while the other hiker was doing it to inspire others.…
Anatoli Boukreev wrote this response in order to defend himself of the accusations that Krakauer mentioned in “Into Thin Air,” which he wrote for a magazine. Boukreev’s intention for writing was to justify and clarify the actions that Krakauer included in his report, since Boukreev believed that Krakauer was unjustly critical of his actions and decisions on Mount Everest, he wanted to argue for himself. Boukreev begins by establishing on what were his decisions and actions were based upon, which he claims was his experience. He states that he has climbed the Everest three times, and also that he has summited, approximately, 19 mountains over 8,000 meters in elevation without the use of supplementary oxygen. He includes this statement at the beginning of…
Into Thin Air, is an autobiography written by Jon Krakauer about an Everest disaster that he experienced first-hand while climbing the mountain in May of 1996. One theme that the author incorporates throughout the book is that climbing costs everything. He explains that climbing Mount Everest costs a lot of money. For some people, mountaineering costs their lives, limbs, and their family to pursue this passion. Krakauer uses a chronological text structure to describe the events of the fateful hike. The author was commissioned by Outside Magazine to write an article about Mount Everest. Originally, he was not supposed to ascend Mount Everest, but he decided that spending two months at Base Camp would be very mundane and monotonous. So, the magazine…
In chapter 12 of John Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, precise words were used to help the reader visualize with the text. John and his team are heading to their final camp on Mt. Everest and are going to make a summit attempt. One example of precise words is when John spots hoards of people ascending on ropes. He doesn’t want to be below them and get hit by something. John wants to avoid “stones whizzing down the face from above”. This helps me visualize how fast and how close to you rocks could be falling on a mountain. He could have used a word like falling but that wouldn’t make the reading experience as fascinating. Another example is when John stops to take a picture of other climbers. “Squinting through my camera’s telephoto lens”…
To get a full perspective of the mountain and the commercialization, he requests to climb the mountain. A few months pass and his newspaper tell him he can climb Everest. Krakauer will be on the Adventure Consultants team from New Zealand. The mountain is separated into five camps, Base Camp, Camp One, Camp Two, Camp Three, and Camp Four. The team makes the climb well, and not many people are injured on the way up. On the descent a storm rolls in and causes issues with the people still on the top of the…
Everest will devour all in its icy crevasses and leave one’s thoughts twisted, questioning why they came here in the first place. Into Thin Air, a journalistic view novel by Jon Krakauer, tells of the May 1996 tempest that ominously shadowed Everest, leaving all on the summit oblivious as the storm’s winds growl from a short distance below them. On May 11th when the storm attacks at its full strength, it would leave eight people dying during their summit attempt. Three guides, Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, and Anatoli Boukreev, automatically stood out because as guides one may feel they hold the full responsibility of this tragedy. Rob Hall, was a studied and cerebral person with a calm disposition, he professionally guided and climbed as a main guide for the Adventure Consultants. Scott Fischer was an American mountain guide for Mountain Madness, in which he founded. He was known for his ascents of the world’s highest mountains without…
In Into Thin Air by Jon Krakaeur, the author’s word choice of descriptive passages and vivid words help well understand his perspective. You see this whole story is written in perspective Jon Krakauer is a journalist by trade, and his motive for going on the Everest expedition is to write an article about the experience of climbing as part of a commercial expedition. The perspective is in the first person, but with a journalistic viewpoint. Krakauer often seems removed from the subject, describing events as objectively as possible, as one would expect in a journalistic article. For example, he is sometimes critical of his fellow climbers, even though elsewhere he describes…
altitudes such as Everest. He was very honest and admitted when he made a mistake. Krakauer struggled climbing and faced many challenges once the storm arrived. I honestly do not think he was trained enough to be climbing Mt. Everest. As an author, he was very detailed and made sure he knew all the facts about the people in the novel. He was also very sympathetic and told about all the guilt he had from the expedition. Krakauer writes, “My actions or failure to act played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris.” (Krakauer 284). He is a very professional writer and really makes you feel a part of the story. His wording was impeccable and I feel like he did not leave out any details. I loved how he was a very honest person while writing which made me have a lot of respect towards him. I relate to his honesty and bluntness. I personally am a blunt person when it comes to telling the truth. I tell it how it is even if it is not the right way to say it. For Krakauer to be able to write this novel after all the stuff he experienced in this disaster is unbelievable. He witnessed some very tragic things and for him to sit down and write it all out shows how determined he was to get the truth out. I honestly believe that he told his part of the story to the best of his ability. I do not think that he could have made it up. He also knew that the other survivors would read this book and would know if he did not tell the story correctly. Since he seemed very loyal I do not think he would have tried to make himself seem different than his real self. If he had in anyway tried to claim that he had no regrets about the expedition and what happened then I would be hesitant of the type of…
Within shipwreck at the bottom of the world Shackleton was quite a resilient captain towards the disasters he and his crew had went through. All had shown how dangerous it is not only going alone on an expedition but with multiple people. Shackleton had fought with Mcneish not always by speech but only on rare occasions physically. He was actually scared during those long painful days but he had not shown it towards his crew so that there was hope for getting back to their homes. Always did he cheer them up and keeping them active so that the crew would not just freeze to death, but to keep each other fit for the long journey home. Throughout the journey Shackleton and his crew has lived on the ocean and survived for many weeks on both boats and also broken off…
Breathing UnderwaterBreathing Underwater by Alex Flinn is written as a series of journal entries. The journal is written by Nick as an assignment from the judge who also sends him to anger management after the girlfriend he beat up finally presses charges. The book was published in 2001, before the recent increase in dating violence novels, and it tells a story often overlooked, that of the abuser instead of the abused.…
In Flight, Sherman Alexie explores the terrible struggles of growing up without the love and care of a guardian. Zits is the main character who tragically loses both his mother and father. He is placed in foster care although he can’t seem to stay out of jail. Throughout Flight, Zits grows from being a troubled youth to a young man ready to change his life because of his imaginary experiences.…
Throughout the personal account novel Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, there are fierce qualities which has mainly transformed from whole climbers’ satisfactory. Loyalty and teamwork invent whole members on Everest to experience hardships. In spite of inexperienced clients’ limitation, guides keep on pushing themselves to achieve their purpose. Due to all members in this expedition participate with their full of passion and determination, guides reveals arrogance, even over clients’ limitation. Moreover, Hall’s knowledge about media players such as Jon Krakauer and Sandy Pittman cause lethal events.…
“Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth.”(Doerr 63). It starts as a Frenchman’s words radiate to a young boy in a small German town through a radio he fixes, but the voice comes back years later when he is a German soldier in France when he recognizes the familiar voice coming from a transmitter. In Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See the radio in the attic of 4 rue Vauborel is a secret when the Germans confiscate radios, in the Nazi-occupied Saint-Malo. The secret radio and the broadcasts influence the world around Werner, Marie-Laure, and Etienne.…