Throughout Jon Krakauer’s 1996 novel, Into the Wild, he included his first-person point of view to enhance the audience’s understanding of his self-absorption. Weakness proved no obstacle for John Beckey as at age 19, he became the first person to climb the Devil’s Thumb. During the initial attempt, one of Beckey’s companion’s, Fritz Wiessner, sprained his knee, forcing the party to turn around. Determined not to fail, Beckey recruited two other climbers from Seattle who enabled him to trek back to his base camp within a week of Wiessner's injury. The climb proved fierce, cold, and difficult, however, the group finally summited the Thumb on August 24, 1946 (Coombs and Wood 193). Climbing the Thumb did not come with ease for Krakauer, despite …show more content…
His initial attempt at the North Face proved a failure, therefore plummeting him into a pit of self-doubt and vanity. The narrator later admits to his many faults that he confessed hindered his ability to see his poor attitude (Krakauer 155). Krakauer incorporates his own weakness of narcissism in order to illustrate his failure at the Devil’s Thumb and his resulting self-absorption. Krakauer’s missteps in his youth soon become quite prevalent to his audience. After failing to climb the North Face of the Devil’s Thumb, Krakauer stated that he became “prepared to lower... [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