Into Thin Air Analysis

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.

Krakauer uses imagery in the novel as well. Furthermore, he says, “The skin on her face was the color of white porcelain.” Jon Krakauer has a desperate tone after saying, “After a night at 26,000 feet without supplemental oxygen, I was even weaker and more exhausted than I had been the previous evening after coming down from the summit.” Looking back at one of the symbols of bottled oxygen it used it rescue people. Furthermore, Krakauer says, “the IMAX team joins in the

In the beginning of chapter 8, Krakauer blatantly states all these strangers’ opinions about McCandless’s death to the reader. These honest and blunt opinions that were stated against McCandless causes one to realize that McCandless’s peril was one hundred percent absurd and puerile. After reading others opinions on his death, it made me resent McCandless even more than I did. “Personally I see nothing positive at all about Chris McCandless’s lifestyle or wilderness doctrine.” (page 71) another opinion states, “McCandless had already gone over the edge and just happened to hit bottom in Alaska.”

In Gavin Carter’s article Between Nothing and Everything, he said “Why people climb mountains is the subject of frequent speculation, and once one steers clear of the red herring ‘because it’s there’, one tends to land on the notion that it has something to do with constructing, embodying and communicating meaning- for oneself or for others” (15). Since this quote talks about how someone either climbs Everest for themselves or someone else for a personally reason, it fits Doug because he climbs Everest for himself. Since Doug climbs Everest because he did not reach the peak the previous year, he proves that he only wants to climb Everest for himself. Ever since the day he could not reach the summit of Everest, Doug only thinks about climbing to the summit of Everest, and fights through extreme injuries (like the frozen larynx and frostbite) to reach the summit. In a way, Everest is a part of Doug because the thought of Everest never left him, and he died after reaching the one goal

Krakauer’s anecdote illustrates how he was drawn to the story of Mccandless and how Chris’s actions, thoughts, and mental processes came naturally. He informs us of the inevitable accidents that can occur while hiking the wilderness, as well as his own mindset during his similarly troubled, youthful years. Krakauer went through similar mental growth as Chris, but had the fortune of surviving where Chris did not. Unlike McCandless, he didn’t have a single minded focus of living an idealistic life inspired by a great such as Jack London or Thoreau, but Krakauer did yearn for something larger than himself. Both he and Chris shared the desire of personal morality.

Krakauer left a note talking about his desire to kill the false being within, somebody who managed to starve to death in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway, and made the guy into a celebrity”. Medred further asserts that Krakauer simply wanted to write about McCandless and spin him as a misrepresented hero because it would sell books. Regardless if he decided to take his own life or he simply

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. “

Like Chris, Krakauer went through harsh and difficult situations and did not feel as confident during his adventure as he did before it. One of the reasons Krakauer adds his experience to the story is to do away with the thought that Chris McCandless was suicidal. Krakauer did not believe that Chris was because he was so similar to Chris when he took his journey, “…had i not returned from the Stikine Ice Cap in 1977, people would have been quick to say of me - as they now say of him - that i had a death wish. Eighteen years after the event, I now recognize that i suffered from hubris, perhaps, and an appalling innocence, certainly; but i wasn't suicidal.” (Page 155, paragraph 5) Krakauer shares this because he wants people to look at Chris as more than a kid who had a death wish.

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.

Jon Krakauer has a high amount of respect for Christopher J. McCandless; not only because they have many similarities, but because McCandless searched deep for the meaning of life and did as he pleased. In the book, “Into The Wild,” Krakauer not only tells the story of McCandless, but also of his own life, and how he has been shaped into his own. Krakauer had a deep love for the wild, just as Chris did. Though, the two did not do the same things, they both pursued their passions which made it easier for Krakauer to relate to Chris. Once climbing a mountain, Krakauer had ran into trouble, just as Chris did on his journey.

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.

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.

, 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

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.

On May ninth and tenth 1996, a disaster shook not only the climbing community but the whole world. Those awful days will last forever through the accounts of many climbers who took part in the horrific disaster. Notably, Into Thin Air, written by Jon Krakauer, and The Climb, co-written by Anatoli Boukreev, an excellent climber who was believed to be the best climber on the mountain, have caused much debate. Sides have been taken, but the credibility shown by Anatoli Boukreev outweigh Krakauer's. His credibility can be shown through his character while on the mountain, his goodwill for the reader, but mostly his knowledge and climbing expertise.