Mortality And Consequences In Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air

Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” is a book of mortality and consequences. In the spring of 1996, Krakauer took an assignment from Outside magazine to report on the industry of commercially guided, high-altitude climbing. He would later regret that decision for the rest of his life. Eight people on his expedition died, either from freezing to death or falling. There are a multitude of health effects that can cause harm to humans at the extreme altitude and temperatures that Everest holds, as well as immediate dangers. “Because the climbing route wove under […] hundreds of these unstable towers, each trip through the Icefall was a little like playing a round of Russian roulette.” (Chapter 6, Paragraph 12). It is a miracle that people still …show more content…
The people feel tangible, living and breathing in the same struggles that Krakauer is experiencing in his journey. Throughout the book as he learns more about each of the characters, he grows more and more attached to them, not thinking about them as climbers but people with lives and motivations. Krakauer expresses that this makes it difficult to be a reporter in this situation, and struggles with expressing the true events on the mountain, as many mistakes were made by many different people. Rob Hall is an extremely complex person in this book, with motives and competition filling his brain. He claims at the bottom of the mountain, "With so many incompetent people on the mountain […] it's pretty unlikely that [they'll] get through this season without something bad happening up high" (7.49). With such intuition, you would think that he would stop the climb, being a legendary climber and renowned guide, but he was competing with another guide named Derek Fischer. This cloud of judgement is one that every person has experienced, blinded by their own motives and goals, and Krakauer eloquently gives the reader a relatable and understandable feeling of empathy with the