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Overview: Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

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ntroduction Information - Riley Miller Title- Into Thin Air Genre- non-fiction Author- Jon Krakauer Purpose- To tell his life changing experience Occasion- To share his experience that changed his life, and many other peoples lives Setting and Historical Context In the book Into Thin Air the location of the story is Mt. Everest, the world's tallest mountain. The disaster happened in late April and mid-May 1996. Jon Krakauer and his team climb up all 4 base camps before reaching base camp 4 and hiking to the summit. All the climbers were in awe that one minute the skies are clear, and then the next minute the skies are stormy and deadly. I would think they could tell that a storm was coming from being that high up, but Mt. Everest …show more content…

He is also the narrator. He has to battle his way back down the mountain side of the antagonist, Mt. Everest. The whole trip on Mt. Everest was a huge conflict, but mostly on the descent down. Jon Krakauer has to figure out a way to survive and make it back down alive. The mountain is not forgiving, and there is no easy path on the way down the mountain side. He can't give up and just lay down. He has to find the courage to overcome this seemingly impossible obstacle. Everyone should learn that lesson of never giving up and always fighting, and finding a way to get past their …show more content…

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. Jon Krakauer often uses personification to describe Mt. Everest and the harsh forces of nature on its slopes, making it seem that they are actively fighting the climbers as they attempt to reach the summit and survive the descent. An example can be found on pg. 59, where he describes the sounds of a glacier: "Retiring to my tent at night, I was serenaded by a madrigal of creaks and percussive cracks, a reminder that I was lying on a moving river of ice." At the height of the storm, Jon Krakauer is so tired and in pain that he temporarily gives up moving and sits still. It is ironic that he finds this better than to the intense struggle of continuing to move, even though he knows staying still means death. Rob Hall and Yasuko Namba have the same experiences, where death seems like the more reasonable option compared to the

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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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As the team ascends to camp one they face there first route or area known as Icefall. It’s given this name due too a large glacier that moves everyday, it also forces the climbers to use dangerous roping techniques that cause them to ascend parts of Icefall independently and not roped to other climbers for support. Once at the top of camp one, Krakauer tries to help one of the sherpa move some equipment up quickly realizes that all physical labor is a heavy and difficult burden on the body. Krakauer later summits to camp two and finds that his body is even weaker the higher up he is. At camp three the winds are very high and temperatures are below zero at night.

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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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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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, 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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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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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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[his] sights” (152). In his crestfallen tone of “lower”, the narrator illuminates a churning sea of internal conflict: the pull between realism and his dreams for the expedition. That same pull forced Krakauer to face his failure and concede his loss to not disappoint himself further. Similarly, the narrator crafts a feeling of situational irony for his audience, since they know he always expected the best from himself but did not succeed at meeting his expectations. In creating unattainable goals, he

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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.

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