Comparing The Devil's Thumb, By Jon Krakauer

Krakauer describes his attempts at climbing the Devil’s Thumb when he was 23 years old and compares it to McCandless. The credibility it provides is the insight and thoughts that McCandless might have had on his odyssey as a young man finishing his own greatest achievement. To Krakauer, “the Devil’s Thumb was the same as medical school, only different” (Krakauer 150). To McCandless, it is likely his adventure in Alaska was the fulfillment he needed after following his parents’ wish of finishing college. Both Krakauer and McCandless had problems with their father’s falsehood and losing the innocence that they once had.

Many of them are inexperienced and would undoubtedly never make it to the top without a guide. The one unifying characteristic shared by all of the climbers is that they have money—enough to shell out $65,000 a piece for their shot at the top. Krakauer spends long chapters giving his best, most educated guesses about why climbers made certain decisions, and what happened to the people who disappeared. This is an exercise that must result in major frustration, as no one can be entirely sure what took place. Many mistakes later, Krakauer manages to piece together an outline of what happened to whom and when during the climb, but the questions he struggles with in almost every situation are "why" and "how".

Krakauer strides to pass majority of the other climbers to avoid getting stuck in a crowd. The climbing teams reach the South Col where they will embark on their final ascent. Overnight a member of the South African team comes to Krakauer’s tent struck with serious illness. He is also dealing with hypothermia like many members of the team. Krakauer directs him to other members of the team for help.

For people who don’t know anything about Everest or climbing in general, Krakauer dives into the history and technicality of climbing Everest. Only after describing every incident leading up to the summit, Krakauer begins detailing the events and mistakes during the storm that ended up killing thirteen people. The storm leaves Krakauer and many other survivors shaken, the only thing left is to see how the deaths on Everest end up affecting friends and family. There is no real ending to this book, it was only meant to purge Krakauer of the guilt and shame Everest left him with. The only resolution is for Krakauer getting as accurate of an account of the event as he could

By the end of the story, Krakauer informs the reader that climbing the mountain had allowed him to grow as a person. He states “Climbing the Devils Thumb, however, had nudged me from the innocence of childhood. It taught me something about what mountains can and can’t do, about the limits of dreams” (page 141). This reveals how the risk Krakauer takes changes him. It pushes him away from the childish innocence that had convinced him to climb the mountain in the first place.

When Krakauer reached the summit, he noticed the clouds changing; a storm was coming, and he needed to descend as fast as he could (pg. 242). As many calamities there were while ascending Everest, descending proved to be the primary

, 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

I was on top of the Devils Thumb.” (Krakauer, 153) However, when he got off the mountain no one believed that he climbed the mountain. He tried telling several people about his trip and none of them would take him seriously. He soon lost his happiness he soon went back to his same old life.

Peak loves to climb and is doing it for the money, the publicity, and his passion for climbing. There have been small conflicts like how josh came into into an argument with George about his heart problems. But there has been a much bigger picture of survival this book has

There are many challenges and obstacles that we face, both mentally and physically in life. After reading, “Into Thin Air,” written by Jon Krakauer, he shares his, along with others experiences of climbing Mount Everest. During this journey, climbers had to mentally and physically prepare themselves for any obstacles that headed their way. Krakauer, in particular, had prior climbing experience, but wasn’t as experience in higher altitudes such as Everest. Unfortunately, some climbers didn’t make it out alive.

The entire day had been a struggle as we slipped on the various rocks underneath our feet as we made our way up Mt. Phillips. Every ten minutes our Scoutmaster, Mr. Britton, would gleefully shout, and “Come on boys, just a little more climbing and we will be at the top.” Although I wanted to believe him, I was running out of energy. This was the most difficult challenge I had ever faced in my seventeen years of life

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

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.

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.

The story “The Devil and Tom Walker” takes place in a stagnant, lonely and treacherous forest. The author, Washington Irving, while writing was also a satirist and a lawyer. He made short fiction popular and was a very original writer. The characters in this story include Tom Walker, Tom Walker’s wife, and the devil. The conflict in this story is when Tom Walker realizes that he does not want to go to hell, so he makes a deal with the devil.