Into Thin Air Essay

In this passage from Jon Krauaker's Into Thin Air, Jon Krauaker does not display the sense of accomplishment that one would expect from achieving such a difficult endeavor. He really displays a sense of grief and dissatisfaction from what he had accomplished. For taking a risk as life threatening as this, in Krauaker's eyes, he couldn't possibly be proud of what he had done when so many men had lost their lives during the same excursion that he journeyed on. Throughout this novel, Jon Krauaker uses immense amounts of rhetorical devices to display his emotion to convey his attitude toward the dangers of climbing Mt. Everest.

On lines twenty-four and twenty-five, Jon Krauaker uses a very effective set of intriguing words to describe one of the many storms the men encountered on their trip. He says, "In fact, the gale of May 10, though violent, was nothing extraordinary; it was a fairly typical Everest squall" (24-25). It is understood that the storm on May 10 was nothing unusual or nothing one would not expect from a storm on Mt. Everest by the way that he uses diction. He emphasizes on how violent, yet un-extraordinary and fairly typical the storm, which shows he researched what one might expect when encountering a horrid storm as of one on Mt. Everest. Not long after, he also expressed how frightened he was when he realized that if the storm had come a mere two hours earlier, eighteen-twenty men could have been killed, Krauaker being one of those spared.

Krauaker also displays the use of hyperboles throughout the novel as well. An example found in the text would, "Predetermined turn-around times were egregiously and willfully ignored" (31-32). He uses the words egregiously and willfully to show that the men knew that they should turn around of previous discussion, but decided against that act because there was an unspoken rivalry between Fischer and Hall. The diction used in this passage helps establish a certain intellectual and mature tone when the situation itself was anything but intellectual and mature. Another obvious display of diction is shown on lines fifty-three and fifty-seven. Krauaker says that, "Climbing mountains will never be a safe, predictable, rue-bound enterprise. This is an activity that idealizes risk-taking" (53-54). This shows that the climbers, knowing what is ahead of them, still want to pursue what is considered to be one of the most dangerous thrilling adventures to all man kind. Krauaker's attitude is displayed here because he indicates slightly that anyone that attempts or intends on attempting the climb of Mt. Everest needs to be prepared for the worst and has to be fully educated on the possible situations that might occur in order to prevent as many