An Analytical Analysis Of Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

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Accomplished rock climber and veteran journalist, Jon Krakauer in his book, Into Thin Air, describes the 1996 Mount Everest disaster. Krakauer 's purpose is to record the events of the expedition in complete detail. He adopts an informative tone in order to demonstrate the deadly effects of pride, poor judgement, and bad luck.
Krakauer begins his book by establishing the credibility of his account of the expedition. Introducing himself as a member of the 1996 Adventure Consultants expedition on Mount Everest, one of several expeditions attempting to summit Everest in May of 1996, is Krakauer 's primary means of building his credibility as a speaker, since being on the mountain at that time would have given him a first hand account of the disaster. However, Krakauer 's version of the disaster may have been inaccurate due to the "staggering instability of the mind" at high altitudes. Consequently, Krakauer interviewed many of the survivors at great length and, when …show more content…

Krakauer ends Into Thin Air by logically developing an argument which explains the deaths of Scott Fischer, the leader of an expedition ascending Everest at the same time as the Adventure Consultant’s expedition, and Yasuko Namba, a client of Adventure Consultants. The storm had rendered both Scott and Yasuko helpless and unable to descend the mountain by their own strength. Consequently, in the final chapters of the book, the surviving leaders must decide between attempting to rescue Scott and Yasuko and “needlessly jeopardizing] the lives of the other climbers” or returning to base camp without the Scott and Yasuko. Realizing that the climbers were “as close to death as a person can be and still breathing” led the leaders to abandon any attempts to rescue either Fischer or Yasuko in the hope of saving the lives of everyone at camp. Including this argument helps Krakauer establish the motives of the surviving climbers. This argument reveals to his readers the reasons Scott fischer and Yasuko

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