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Essay Comparing The Devil's Thumb And Everest

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“The Devil’s Thumb” and “Everest” Perhaps there is one accomplishment everyone needs to feel complete whether that is something along the lines of making an advancement in something say cancer, and while that may be true others have what may seem to be a little more trivial goals and not as illusory when compared to one extravagant as that. In this case, John Krakauer sets out to try and make something meaningful with his life by climbing The Devil’s Thumb in “The Devil’s Thumb.” Some may regard this dream of one that is of a gratuitous or even a spurious one because there is not any real reason why he feels like this will help him to feel accomplished in life other than the fact that it is something he has never tried to do before. Similarly, Erik Weihenmayer sets out to do to the same thing as Krakauer with Mount Everest …show more content…

For example, when they start climbing up the mountain, the wind blowing ruins the original idea of how to help Erik hear his way up the mountain which is when you see the unexpectedness in his tone causing the idea of using the bell as a solution to help expedite the process of climbing. In “The Devil’s Thumb,” reflection upon those flashbacks can set the tone for the present day text. In “The Devil’s Thumb” more than “Everest” the reader is taken on an emotional roller coaster. From the end of the passage, it was evident that Krakauer did not feel like becoming a luminary from this experience was very fulfilling for him, causing him to reach the top of the mountain and immediately curtain his trip by not hardly spending any time at the top as if he felt he would receive some kind of endowment for reaching the top other than being amongst the pantheon of other mountain

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296 Words | 2 Pages

Jon Krakauer is looking to fulfill a childhood ambition by finally climbing Mount Everest. After being assigned to write a brief piece about the mountain for Outside magazine, Krakauer manages to convince his bosses to fund a full-fledged expedition to the top. Bold. Krakauer is climbing with Adventure Consultants, a commercial group led by experienced climber Rob Hall. The journalist befriends several members of his group, such as Andy Harris, a guide, and Doug Hansen, a fellow client and postal worker back home.

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319 Words | 2 Pages

Krakauer describes his attempts at climbing the Devil’s Thumb when he was 23 years old and compares it to McCandless. The credibility it provides is the insight and thoughts that McCandless might have had on his odyssey as a young man finishing his own greatest achievement. To Krakauer, “the Devil’s Thumb was the same as medical school, only different” (Krakauer 150). To McCandless, it is likely his adventure in Alaska was the fulfillment he needed after following his parents’ wish of finishing college. Both Krakauer and McCandless had problems with their father’s falsehood and losing the innocence that they once had.

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513 Words | 3 Pages

In the long run, Krakauer concludes that complete arrogance is in part to blame for the tragedy that takes place on Everest. Hall "bragged on more than one occasion that he could get almost any reasonably fit person to the summit. " Their arrogance also caused their clients to lower their guard and not fully appreciate the risks of the expedition. Overall, Krakauer taught many different themes within the novel that everyone should

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974 Words | 4 Pages

, it is important to note that the characters portrayed in this book are real people. The unique conditions and the weather of the setting forced the climbers to make choices that they could not have made in a different situation. The tough choices made by the climbers and the setting influenced the result of the story. Krakauer’s tone for the most part is respectful toward the guides and climbers, and he narrates as objectively as possible, while including his own concerns and doubts. His tone in the beginning expresses excitement and nervousness, but later turns into

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321 Words | 2 Pages

In chapters 14 and 15 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer becomes more than just an investigator or a narrator, he becomes a character. He tells his story of climbing the Devils Thumb, which exposes the similarities between himself and McCandless. This aids to his understanding of McCandless’s motivations, without ever meeting him, due to the parallels in their personalities and family issues. Chapter 14 is devoted to Krakauer’s story about his youthful love for mountain climbing. At age 23, he plans to do a dangerous climb on the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska alone. “

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1031 Words | 5 Pages

Mountain climbing is a very tough activity that includes years of training before someone is ready to complete an exhilarating climb. Looking around the world, there are many amazing places to climb. Although two of the most difficult and intense climbs include the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska and Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on earth. “Everest,” by Erik Weihenmayer and “The Devils Thumb,” by Jon Krakauer have some similarities and some differences in terms of the author’s perspective, organization structure, and tone and word choice. As the two authors wrote, they showed their struggles and feats of every situation through words.

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741 Words | 3 Pages

Krakauer’s investigation then picks up a replacement subject: McCandless’s frustration together with his family. once McCandless graduated from highschool, he went on a visit to CA and discovered that his father had been a spouse. Krakauer theorizes that McCandless’s anger at this long-kept family secret offers some motivation for his need to go away his life behind. Krakauer then dedicates 2 chapters to his own ascent of the Devils Thumb.

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2776 Words | 12 Pages

Many people thought McCandless' unplanned journey in the wild was a suicidal attempt and that McCandless was suicidal. I don’t think this was the case, I think he went into the wild to explore and clear his head from finding out about his fathers passing. I believe he didn’t want to die, however he knew he would, especially since he was starving and there was a note saying he needed help laying right next to him. Krakauer also had father issues like McCandless and wanted to climb mountains as well, one of them being Devil's Thumb. It sounds like it would be a very dangerous hike to get to the top, just based on the name.

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300 Words | 2 Pages

Chapters 14 & 15 explained Krakauer’s personal expedition to Devil’s Thumb. I learned a lot about Krakauer’s personal life and the factors contributing to his journey. After reading his personal experience, I understood his compassion for Chris McCandless 's life and journey and why he wrote Into The Wild. Krakauer explains how he had such devotion to climb Devil’s Thumb, but I interpreted this as him being type of guy who sets his mind to a task and then is extremely driven to accomplish it.

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1249 Words | 5 Pages

Doug worked two different jobs to afford to go on the trip to Everest, and was making his second attempt to reach the summit of Everest. Doug came back to Everest to try and reach the summit for the first time. Because Doug failed to reach the summit on his first attempt, I argue that Doug Hansen’s primary motivation

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648 Words | 3 Pages

These are some struggles he has faced the day he decided to climb Mount Everest. Those topics I mentioned previously are significant because everyone has choices whether they want to go out with friends or stay in to do their homework to be prepared for school the following day or in Krakauer’s case spend weeks climbing a mountain or not.

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1892 Words | 8 Pages

The experience of relentless action itself is where one could conceivably find refuge, as even when the destination is reached, no further refuge is found. Simultaneously, while the author of Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer, depicted his experience as an adventurous youth, he also mentioned his perspective of actuality concerning the journey’s real association with refuge when he emphasizes how “It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing.

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451 Words | 2 Pages

In the story, we learn about Krakauer’s experience climbing the devil’s thumb. His contraption to save him from the crevassases was actually well thought out to an extent. Krakauer also knew his path and his landscape and he brought the appropriate supplies to survive unlike our friend Chris McCandless, as well as many others. Though Krakauer held Chris’s same illusion of immortality (which most people of a young age unknowingly hold), he was still highly aware of his fears as well as his limits. And this awareness carried him back to

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475 Words | 2 Pages

And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace." ( Krakauer 136) This quote shows that reaching the top of Mount Everest is a goal or achievement for many of the climbers despite the fact that this experience is also painful and dreadful. Not only is the experience not enjoyable, but also the outcome of achieving the mountain isn’t clear. In this instance, it was seen as “state of grace”, or maybe free of

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607 Words | 3 Pages

Many things could go wrong climbing the highest mountain in the world with an elevation of 29,029 ft. 12 people died climbing Mount Everest. No is responsible for those death. The climbers had chosen to climb the mountain. In the novel it states, “Hall was charging $65,000 a head to guide clients to the top of the world” (Krakauer 35). This shows that a person is willing to pay to go through so much pain, risk and sickness to summit the top of the world.

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