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Overview: Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

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As I approach my end of highschool in the next couple years, I want to find a sense of purpose in life so that I can find a sense of direction. I envy people who have decided who they are, and what they want in life. I envy people, such as members of Everest expeditions, who have worked up to the points in their lives where they have a goal, and are hell bent on completing these goals. I envy the determination, bravery, and even the naivety of numerous climbers throughout the book, Into Thin Air. These mountain climbers decided on what they wanted in life and dedicated themselves to it completely; hopefully I can too one day. Into Thin Air is a narrative written by Jon Krakauer recounting the spring climbing season of 1996. Krakauer presents …show more content…

While learning of the conditions of the climbers, the reader is given a better picture of what the reality was of climbing Everest. As the climbers scale the mountain, it demands more and more physical endurance. The climbers feel themselves deteriorating, even breathing is difficult. “[At Camp Three] Brain cells were dying. Our blood was growing dangerously thick and sludgelike. Capillaries in our retinas were spontaneously hemorrhaging. Even at rest, our hearts beat at a furious rate.” (Krakauer 200) The physical limits presented to reader are beyond belief, yet the mental challenges faced by Krakauer and others is almost beyond comprehension. Hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, often leads to confusion and as a result deadly decisions. For example, Andy Harris, presumably in a hypoxic state, mistakenly cranked Krakauer’s oxygen tank to full flow, leading to Jon descending part of Everest without supplemental oxygen. Krakauer becomes too fatigued physically and mentally to even appreciate his childhood dream of summiting Everest: “ I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I’d been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotions that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn’t summon the energy to care.” (Krakauer

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Mason Moore Mrs. Vermillion Advanced Placement Language and Composition March 29, 2017 Ascent to Death Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” is an amazing book that describes the treacherous journey from the bottom to the top of Mt. Everest. Krakauer joins a large team of climbers led by Rob Hall to the top of the summit. They endure many hardships not just from the terrain but from the sheer effects of the high altitude on the body. This ultimately caused the down fall of many skilled and unskilled climbers on May Tenth.

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Into Thin Air Novelist, Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, recounts the catastrophe that happened on Mount Everest, at the top of the world. There are many factors that led to the final conclusion of the tragedy on May 10, 1996. It’s impossible to know how different courses of action could have changed the outcome of those desperate hours, but there were things done that made the rescue more problematic. Rob Hall’s actions directly affected the success of the climbing expedition. Rob Hall was the head guide of Adventure Consultants, the climbing group that Jon Krakauer was assigned to.

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Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer Into Thin Air is a non-fiction and adventure book that details the disaster that occurred in 1996 at Mount Everest, and it started as a magazine article. The book is a personal account of the author Jon Krakauer, a professional writer and mountaineering hobbyist, who was sent on the Everest expedition by Outside Magazine with the task of writing an article about his experience. In my opinion, people should read Into Thin Air because it is a story about survival, and it consists of valuable lessons about, perseverance, determination, and character.

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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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Into Thin Air, written by Jon Krakauer, is a book about Krakauer’s experience on Mount Everest. Jon always loved mountain climbing, and it was his dream to climb Mount Everest. Naturally, when Outside Magazine hired him to climb the mountain and write an article, he accepted. Krakauer decided to go on the expedition with Adventure Consultants. Adventure Consultants, although very expensive, had a great reputation as being very safe.

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To survive in the literally thin air at the top of Everest, which is at a lower atmospheric pressure than sea level because of the higher elevation, the Adventure Consultant guides and clients used bottled oxygen to provide a simulated lower pressure and give more oxygen to its user. The clients and guides all trekked up Everest into air with less oxygen by choice, but it affected everyone in ways almost insane to ordinary people breathing ordinary air. Few, if none of them realized that more than half of them who went up wouldn’t come down. Some causes of the disaster were multiple kinds of altitude sickness and lowered oxygen that impaired judgement, which was a chain reaction that lead to the deaths of even more people. But it was also arrogance and the overconfident, zealous manner that the mountain was approached and climbed that lead to the disaster as well.

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From the view of Jon Krakauer, in his book ‘Into Thin Air’. Lopsang Jangbu, twenty-five years old and a member of The Mountain Madness team- Scott Fischer’s team. He was a sherpa, -meaning someone who lived on the borders of Nepal and Tibet, renowned for their skill in mountaineering- working under Scott, he was loyal to him and did mostly what he thought Scott wanted him to during this expedition. This man had summited everest 4 times. One day when it came time to set the ropes, Lopsang had not done as requested; to climb before the others and set up the ropes.

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Mount Everest is torture for some and it take great ability to accomplish such mountain. The mountain is a physical challenge but a mental challenge as well. Few people lack the mental part when hitting

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The title “Into Thin Air” is quite suitable for Jon Krakauer’s novel about his dangerous ascent and descent of Mount Everest because it is an iconic and well written quote in the book; it reminds the reader of the idiom “disappear into thin air”, and because of Everest’s extreme altitude. The title is suitable because of it is part of an iconic quote in the book. One of the guides, Groom, says to Krakauer, “Beck was so hopelessly blind that every ten meters he’d take a step into thin air and I’d have to catch him with rope” (Krakauer 214).   This quote alone represents the immediate danger everyone was in, the trust that the climbers had to put in one another, and the effects that the cold and altitude that they had to deal with.

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This is significant because not many people have the knowledge to survive physically as well as mentally in Mount Everest like Grylls does, and he can use that knowledge to his advantage. When he was racing to the cookhouse, “Look at yourself, Bear, I thought. Today is Endurance. Yet you can hardly walk to the cookhouse.” (p. 197)

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Claudia Kennedy English 8 Mrs. Downs April 6, 2023 Conflicts on the Top of the World Jon Krakauer, suvivor of the tragic disaster on Mt. Everest in the year 1996, upon surviving this life threatening disaster he was inspired to write a novel. The idea of the novel was for people to gain a better understanding of the conflicts that took place up there. The novel was named Into Thin Air. Into Thin Air showed readers the true challenges of mountain climbing. Along with the idea of how much people are willing to give to reach their goals.

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Imagine yourself on the side of a mountain 15,000 feet in the air and the only thing that is keeping you from falling off of that mountain is a piece of rope you tied. It’s scary to imagine, isn’t it? To some people that’s what they dream about doing, they love mountain climbing. Two of these people, who love mountain climbing, are Jon Krakauer and Erik Weihenmayer. Jon Krakauer was just a man from Mobile, Alabama who dreamed of doing something that had never been done before; climbing the great north wall of The Devil’s Thumb.

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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 climbers are no different. They depended their lives on certain equipment. Such equipment included oxygen tanks, which helps get oxygen throughout the body when there is very little oxygen in the atmosphere due to the altitude the climbers were at. These tanks proved to be an important factor in the book while the climbers climbed because as the climbers climbed higher they began to become light headed, which affects the decision making ability of a climber. When a climber’s ability to make good and rational decisions decreases so does the chance of survival decrease, especially when every step could be your last.

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Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. Knowing that any person in the world can climb Mount Everest is amazing. In the novel Into Thin Air written by Jon Krakauer, climbers climb to the highest point of the world. Some everyday people like Jon Krakauer, who is an author hired to write an article about Mount Everest for an adventure magazine and Doug Hansen who is a postal worker climbing Mount Everest for the second time.

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