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Certainty In Night, To Kill A Mockingbird, And Into Thin Air

819 Words4 Pages

Certainty is a firm conviction that something is the case. This is one of the many luxuries in life. Knowing gives a person power and allows for a feeling of security and control to be present in their life. Along with this grand luxury comes the harsh truth of reality. It is impossible to be certain of anything in life. There are countless times this is proven to be true. Four novels that correspond with the idea of impossible certainty are Silas Marner, Night, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Into Thin Air. Silas is certain he will never be happy again. Elie loses all hope and is certain death will come to him in the camps. Scout is certain of her safety. Lastly, death is certain to those on Mt. Everest. All of the characters in these tales learn all too quickly that certainty is unattainable in life. …show more content…

After being cast away by the people he loves, he is certain that he will never find happiness again. Believing people are cruel and unfeeling, Silas finds solitude in his riches. “Moral certainty is never more than probability” (Giovanni Battista Beccaria). With that in mind he soon loses his money and goes further into depression. Before he can fully be certain of unreachable happiness, he discovers a gift on his doorstep. Silas is now a loving parent to a beautiful little girl; additionally, he is an active member of the community. Silas was a man so certain that the darkness around him would never leave, that he believed light would forever be unattainable. He is not the first to live by this nor will he be the last. Next, a boy’s certainty in his faith is taken into

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Overview: Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

986 Words | 4 Pages

79) (Simile). "The wind kicked up huge swirling waves of powder snow that washed down the mountain like breaking surf, plastering my clothing with frost." (pg. 125) (Simile).These smilies really compare, and show the reader the harsh conditions the climbers faced everyday. The main paradox in the book is that experience and preparation ultimately means nothing on Mt. Everest. In particular, no one thought that such a tragedy could occur on an expedition guided by Rob Hall, the most celebrated Everest guide dog of the decade.

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Rhetorical Analysis Of Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

459 Words | 2 Pages

All in all, the author manages to balance out his appeal to emotion with the intense sequences of his journey up Mount Everest. Describing how sad he was when he saw his teammates buried in the snow ice cold, and also rescuing one of his teammates, only to see him die a few minutes later from severe

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Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air

1302 Words | 6 Pages

From Krakauer’s letter to the reader, we have a basic understanding of his immense personal grief as the result of a tragedy on Mount Everest and the reason for writing the book. Then instead of jumping right into the narrative from the very beginning, Krakauer starts in the middle– the time and day when he reached the peak of Mount Everest and returned, and how eight others couldn’t do the same. This interlude first shocked me but also prepared me for what was to come. Most are unaware of what occurs at Mount Everest but this book awakens those who are oblivious, including myself. The book was incredibly informative, starting right from the beginning when the author gives the complete history of those attempting to reach the top of the world.

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Rhetorical Analysis Of Patrick Henry's Speech

1317 Words | 6 Pages

This thought of certainty is very

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Overview: Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

803 Words | 4 Pages

After being subjected to the many risky features, climbers continue to ascend Everest. Many question why clients would ever want to climb with such risks, but they say the need is too strong. They ignore their logical thoughts about turning back, and are adamant about reaching the top. Clients shouldn’t continue climbing Everest if there is a risk of death.

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The Tragic Analysis Of Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

1339 Words | 6 Pages

Only 6.5% of people who climb Mt. Everest don’t make it back down. But that was not the case for Jon Krakauer in his group. In total, nine lives were lost on the mountain, and three more lives were lost in the following month. These tragic events led to many changes in the character of Jon Krakauer. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into Thin Air, Ngawang’s choice to refuse to get treated for HAPE, Beck Weather’s choice to stand on a big rock and let the wind blow him off, and Rob Hall’s choice to not abandon Doug Hansen and save himself led to Jon becoming a wiser, more respectful, and mentally stronger individual.

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977 Words | 4 Pages

In “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson, John Ames III is the 3rd minister in a small town in Iowa. He is dying and he is aware that he is leaving his wife and children with nothing except books of his work. Ames sole purpose of the novel was to write to his son so that he would understand his family's history and along that get to know his father that most likely his son will have no recollection of his father. Ames started writing his book when he was eight years before his death which gave give a good time to write his thoughts, his regrets, his sad life, and the joy of having his son but, to not be able to be part of his life. He has never truly experienced a happy life and has lived in solitary for 40 years after the death of his sweetheart Louise and his first born son who died after birth.

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Rhetorical Analysis Into Thin Air

776 Words | 4 Pages

The passage in question is taken from Jon Krakauer’s personal account of his endeavour to summit Everest in 1996, and it is a description of Jon Krakauer’s experiences while at approximately 21,000 feet on the mountain itself. The book is called Into Thin Air, and was published a mere year after the tragedy that struck the team headed by Rob Hall, the founder of a mountaineering agency: Adventure Consultants. In this specific extract, Krakauer uses vivid imagery and similes in his description of the surroundings to show the obvious peril that climbing the most formidable peak on the planet entails. Additionally, he deploys diction that conveys his initial shock when he sees the corpses, as opposed to the other climbers, who seemed to be fairly

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492 Words | 2 Pages

In both excerpts, "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "A Part of the Sky" by Harper Lee and Robert Newton Peck they can be considered similar. For an example, they both focus on a young boy. In both stories, the boys' family is very poor. Also, Walter Cunningham and Robert Peck are from the countryside. There are obviously more similarities in the book but those are the ones I wanted to focus on the most.

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Symbolism In Into Thin Air

847 Words | 4 Pages

Krakauer explains how following the discovery of Everest as the highest mountain in the world, the journey to the top would take the lives of 24 men, the efforts of 15 expeditions and the passage of 101 years before someone would finally reach the summit. This demonstrates how all though the expedition to the top was not easy, and would require the lives of many men, people would not stop trying because that is human nature. Not all people climb Mt. Everest in their lifetime, but most people, if not all, work hard to achieve something or be successful. Whether that success may be in their professional life, their personal life, or anything else, Mt. Everest can symbolize all of it. It symbolizes a journey to success and relates to the theme of humans natural drive and passion to pursue what they want.

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Climbers In Into Thin Air

1249 Words | 5 Pages

For as long as anyone can remember, people have dreamed of reaching the summit of Mt. Everest. During May of 1996, an expedition set out to Nepal to attempt a climb up Mt. Everest. By the end of this expedition to the top of Everest, many climbers lost their lives due to the brutal weather. In Jon Krakauer’s novel Into Thin Air, he takes readers through the story of the expedition, and he talks about the climbers who died. Among the list of the dead was a man named Doug Hansen.

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The Heros Journey In The Hobbit And Cormac Mccarthy's The Road

1106 Words | 5 Pages

Since The Road is more about the Boy’s journey than his father’s, the supreme ordeal at the end of the novel is the death of the Man. The death of the Man, who acted as the Boy’s mentor during the many challenges faced by the duo, represents the largest and most devastating challenge faced by the Boy. Not only is this due to the fact that the Boy feels unprepared to continue on without his father, but it is also because the “reward” and “road back” are not immediately apparent to the Boy. Compared to even the most challenging obstacles the Boy faced in the past, the death of his father leaves him both physically and mentally pained and exhausted. However, relief from his situation arrives promptly in the form of the stranger who claims to be a “good guy,” though the Boy’s future remains forever uncertain.

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To convey this, Wiesel allows the reader to establish a deep connection with Eliezer in order to understand his experiences of loss, as well as findings, of faith. In Night, Wiesel uses the motif of questions, expressive diction, and symbols of the loss of faith to express the idea that being deprived of faith will occur, but in order to overcome obstacles that one faces throughout their life, they have to be able to find new faith.

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The Rise Of Silas Lapham Analysis

2519 Words | 11 Pages

As he spirals, the more the articulation of the common man comes through his fading disposition; as a contrast to earlier in the dinner where he withheld his tongue, he can now speak on "something he was clear of" even though he is still unable to follow a "great deal of the talk" (201). This "something" that Silas references is his civil war experience that instantly changes the tone, pace, and mood of the party with the weight of "Something serious, something somber" (201). Silas' struggle for articulation is ironically transformed into a failure for articulation the moment he has something to say. With Silas no longer able to read the social situation or understand the language of the aristocrats, he slips back into the only thing he knows how to be clear about: the common man. Furthermore, he even has the urge to “speak up and say that he had been there” in the position of the “’hard-working poor”’ man and “knew how such a man felt” (194).

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525 Words | 3 Pages

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