Essay on Into Thin Air and Krakauer

Ian Roberts
Into Thin Air Book Report
Into Thin Air was written by Jon Krakauer in 1997, this book was easily on of the best I’ve ever read. It is about Krakauer’s experience climbing Mount Everest in 1996, one of the most devastating years for climbers on the mountain. Krakauer was initially assigned to write an article for Outside Magazine about the commercialization of the mountain, doing this he would only stay on base camp of Everest. Knowing this just made him want to climb the mountain even more. Krakauer joined a guiding company called Adventure Consultants led by Rob Hall. This was known to be one of the best and safest climbing company’s in the world, so it was an easy decision for Krakauer. Although being on a team with clients who weren’t very skilled at climbing, things were going pretty well but, the unpredictable weather above 24,000 feet can truly cause one’s team to have a very rough time. This book was written for anyone who wanted to know Krakauer’s side to what happened on that fatefull year upon Everest. Also for someone who loves adventure/climbing story’s, or even someone just looking for a great non-fiction book!
As I said in the paragraph before, this book was about his side to what happened, so one would think wouldn’t there be a lot of biases? In my opinion, I didn’t think that there were very many. Because of how one’s body reacts in the so called “Death Zone” (anywhere above 24,000 feet) where your decision making, perception, and thoughts are just not right, it’s understandable that Krakauer had to guess at some points. This is where most people see the biases in the writing. For example, with the mind altering effects, when Krakauer interviewed people from the expedition and they have no explanation for things, he had to guess as to why or how things happened, so when asking russian guide Anatoli Boukreev why he went up to the summit so quickly and left his team behind, which is a very bad thing for a guide to do, had no explanation, thus making Krakauer sounding like a bad guy if he said he just wasn’t thinking. Another example is how Krakauer himself under the mind altering affects mistaked one of his team mates Martin Adams, for Andy Harris, one of his guides, and how he told everyone that Harris was safe, which was transmitted to base camp, which in turn was transmitted to Harris’s worrying wife who was so happy to hear he was ok. In true reality, Harris died. Krakauer had some explaining to do.
When I think of the message of this book, a few things come to mind. Because many other climbers wrote stories about what they think happened and how it happened, Krakauer just wanted to express what he saw, and wanted people to believe he was telling them the complete truth. A good way of showing this was how early in the book he talked about Outside Magazine coming to him asking him to write an article for them, and how he was able to convince the magazine to let him do a full climb story, shows that people had trust in him and that what he wrote was true. When talking purpose, one predominate thing sticks out. He simply wanted to inform and as I just said tell his side of the story. Tell what truly happened! When I personally think of it, Into Thin Air was written to bring peace and understanding to the horrific aftermath and to make sense of what happened on the mountain that fateful day.
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