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.
In the article “Anatoli Boukreev (Responds to Krakauer)”, Boukreev argues against author Jon Krakauer and his initial allegations in his article “Into Thin Air”, which was published in the September 1996 issue of Outside Magazine. He claims that he was more than qualified to guide groups of paying clients to summit Mount Everest. This is due to his extensive experience in doing exactly that. For example, he has conquered a grand total of 22 mountains in more than twenty years. He has climbed all 22 of these without the assistance of any sort of supplementary oxygen. He also defends the decisions that he made on what he did and did not do when he was faced with challenges that ultimately decided the fate of the others’ lives. For example, his
The passage definitely showcases Krakauer’s excruciating journey, even through a mere 35 lines, but also conveys how Krakauer matured as a mountaineer just after seeing one dead body. An “unspoken agreement” is also talked about, which highlights the figurative weight that the climbers must have been carrying during their endeavor. Lastly, through this extract, it becomes evident that climbing a mountain, or facing any challenge in life, is bound to induce a certain maturity and acceptance in everyone. A certain acceptance of the fact that life is hard, and that hard work must be put in to achieve any
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.
Krakauer was responsible for his journal entries and keeping himself and others on task throughout the journey. When plans did not go as expected, he was left with the responsibility and the effects of what happened. The group's responsibilities show through their journey, and justice is received in the completion of the treacherous task.
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.
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.
In chapters 14 and 15 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer becomes more than just an investigator or a narrator, he becomes a character. He tells his story of climbing the Devils Thumb, which exposes the similarities between himself and McCandless. This aids to his understanding of McCandless’s motivations, without ever meeting him, due to the parallels in their personalities and family issues. Chapter 14 is devoted to Krakauer’s story about his youthful love for mountain climbing. At age 23, he plans to do a dangerous climb on the Devil’s Thumb in Alaska alone. “
There are people in life who crave thrill and adventure; who feel their life is missing something. Some people choose to climb Everest to fulfill this. Desperate to summit, to experience a view beyond words, people risk their lives to get a sneak peek at the top of the world. Although Everest is the world’s highest mountain, it is also the world’s highest open grave. In Jon Krakauer 's Into Thin Air, eight climbers lose their lives; the most dead in one year.
Family, friends, and possessions pressure individuals through the imposition of values that contribute to identity; we are told that we obtain our qualities simply by inheritance and association. The environment one chooses to surround themselves reflects similar learned behaviors and thought processes. Deviating from the norm is often contemptible, but natural, according to author Jon Krakauer. Realizing that he did not want to become a carbon copy of his parents and environment, Christopher McCandless wandered the American West for two years, as a nomad, to reject society as he knows it―his family, friends, and possessions. He burns his money, abandons his car, and cuts all ties with his family on an identity crisis that would lead to his death in the inhospitable Alaskan tundra. These actions, taken alone, allows critics to characterize him as bizarre, irrational, and even suicidal. Furthermore, this characterization dissociates him from his own humanity, as the consensus was that McCandless must have been out of his right mind. To combat this impression, Jon Krakauer wrote Into the Wild to humanize McCandless in order to justify McCandless’s choices in spite of the fact that they lead to his death.
Krakauer places himself throughout the story to compare his experiences with McCandless’s. Although he does express his opinion frequently, Krakauer still allows the reader to create their own ruling of the wandering itinerant. Krakauer’s intricate sentence structure gives the reader
Jon Krakauer is a writer known for writing novels about being outdoors and mountain climbing. He is also the author of, Into the Wild, based on the journey of Christopher McCandless. Krakauer has a very unique type of writing style which the style of his book is not very easy to read. The books itself is not in chronological order and jumps around and it also changes from the journey of McCandless to Krakauer’s point of view.
Many things could go wrong climbing the highest mountain in the world with an elevation of 29,029 ft. 12 people died climbing Mount Everest. No is responsible for those death. The climbers had chosen to climb the mountain. In the novel it states, “Hall was charging $65,000 a head to guide clients to the top of the world” (Krakauer 35). This shows that a person is willing to pay to go through so much pain, risk and sickness to summit the top of the world.
This is because, in the end, the two guides were not careful or safe, each for their own reasons. “Likewise since he had failed to get anybody to the top in 1995, it would have been bad for Hall’s business if he failed again in 1996-- especially if Fisher succeeded(285).” This is Hall’s reason for pushing forward, the fact that it would be bad for his business if he didn’t keep on pushing forward, especially since he “was charging $65,000 a head to guide clients to the top of the world(37).” Fisher's reason was that “Fisher had never guided Everest before 1996. From a business standpoint, there was a lot of pressure on him to be successful(285).”
In the novel, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, stated multiple connections between psychological distress and mountain climbers. An analysis of mountain climbers reveals that more than 85% of them share a dilemma of psychological distress due to the dreadful experiences in their life (website). For numerous of climbers, it may have been a temporary adventure and for others it is a committed task they are willing to actualized. The novel describes Chris McCandless as an idealistic and intelligent man that has his own beliefs in how human beings should live their life. A ruthless man who thought his only solution was to escape into the wild.