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The Tragic Analysis Of Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

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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. Ngawang’s choice to not get treated for HAPE, or High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, led to Jon becoming a wiser person. After this, …show more content…

Jon had more respect for the mountain, and more respect for others and their capabilities. After Beck had been blown off a rock, beyond the sight of everyone around him, he was presumed dead. Hutchinson organized a search team consisting of four Sherpas to locate his body, as well as the body of another climber who had also been missing, and was thought to be dead. They found both climbers, who, to their surprise, were alive, but barely. “Beck’s head was also caked with a thick armor of frost. Balls of ice the size of grapes were matted to his hair and eyelids.” (260), Hutchinson reports. Shocked, and confused about what to do, he asked Lhakpa, who had climbed Everest before and was respected by the Sherpas,what the best course of action would be. Lhakpa said that the best decision would likely be to just leave the two climbers, because “...they would certainly die before they could be carried down to Base Camp, and attempting a rescue would needlessly jeopardize the lives of other climbers on the Col...” (260) After being abandoned, Beck later returned to Camp, having walked himself, even in his terrible condition. This made Jon a more respectful person, because seeing how people can persevere, and live in even the toughest of times gave him more respect for others. As well, his respect for the mountain grew, after …show more content…

Rob Hall had been leading another one of his clients, Doug Hansen, up to the summit of the mountain. Even though the time that Rob had designated as the time to descend passed two hours ago, Rob kept going because he had had to turn Doug around on a previous climb. As they were approaching the summit, Doug was struggling, and as they began to descend, they ran out of oxygen. Due to miscommunication, Rob was unaware that there were two full bottles of oxygen waiting for them, so he stayed with Doug. Rob could have easily made it down to safety, but Doug couldn’t, and Rob didn’t want to leave his client stranded on the mountain. Andy Harris eventually got some oxygen up to Rob, but by the time he got it up Doug was dead and Rob was in terrible condition and too frostbitten to descend. Eventually, Rob perished, succumbing to the cold. This led to Jon becoming mentally stronger because he was without a guide, so he was forced to think more independently, and be more of a leader. He realized that even the most experienced climbers aren’t immune to the wrath of the mountain. After Rob Hall was gone, Jon and the other members of his group who were still alive were forced to make more decisions for themselves, and they had to really work together to survive, which made Jon mentally stronger because he had to be strong and work together. He had to shake off what had

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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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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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107 Words | 1 Pages

Krakauer ends Into Thin Air by appealing to logos in order to develop an argument which explains the deaths of Scott Fischer, the leader of an expedition ascending Everest at the same times as the Adventure Consultant’s expedition, and Yasuko Namba, a client of Adventure Consultants. In the final chapters of the book, many of the survivors are faced with the decision. of whether or not to save their nearly dead team mates. Krakauer argues that attempting to rescue the injured survivors like Fischer and Namba, would needlessly jeopardize the lives of the other climbers. Including this argument helps Krakauer establish the motives of the surviving climbers.

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Hall held the lives of all his clients in his hands, and he intended to help them descend safely. He set a turn-around time to begin to descending down Everest to assure his clients had enough supplemental oxygen and stamina to continue. That turn-around time came and went, Hall never putting it into effect. There are many factors that could have contributed to Hall abandoning his fool-proof plan. Months prior, Rob Hall had convinced Doug Hansen to give Mt. Everest a second shot, as he didn’t make it to the summit last time.

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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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974 Words | 4 Pages

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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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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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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I think that jon Krakauer is wrong to just bring Lopsang into this writing of his and didn't ask lopsang about this because it could be just make him look horrible and no one wants that feeling. He also was just trying to survive as Jon Krakauer did say in his movie at 8000 meters its every climber for themselves and Jon Krakauer could have helped Beck Weathers down the hill so he wouldn't have needed to remove his nose instead he let Mike Groom take him down the mountain and got stuck. Jon was also the first one up and no one followed head boss Rob Hall's instructions to turn around by 2:00 the only one was Krakauer and he could have helped others turn around by then and he didn't help so it's partially his fault and lopsang helped get down while Jon was in his tent at night while people were dying.

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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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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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770 Words | 4 Pages

He may have been stranded on the mountain like the others if he had used all his energy on the ascent and not having enough to get down. Like Lopsang, who used all his energy helping clients to the top, that he could not make it to the top himself. Jon made the smart decisions that helped him on journey like graduates who will take the knowledge they acquired from class to the community around them where they will make the smart

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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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607 Words | 3 Pages

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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The book Into Thin Air is a book that outlines the Mount Everest disaster, as factually correct it can. However, there is a person that is too blame for this disaster to happen. The main person responsible for the deaths of the Mount Everest disaster was Robert Hall. However, that does not mean Robert Hall was the only one at fault. Ultimately the blame falls on Ang Dorje, Robert Hall, and Ian Woodall, each for their own reasons, and ultimately Hall, and Fisher were responsible for the others.

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