Supernatural Mountain

Into Thin Air is a nonfiction account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster by Jon Krakauer, which details what was at the time the deadliest season of all time on Mount Everest. There are many flashbacks in the writing, Krakauer starts off in an intense, high-energy situation near the summit of Mount Everest, but uses many flashbacks to give the story context and provide an exposition for the story. For example, he starts off the story with him on Mount Everest on the day of the tragedy, but there isn’t any context provided so he uses a flashback to provide the reader with the reason why he is on Everest in the first place. “In March 1995 I received a call from an editor at Outside magazine proposing that I join a guided Everest expedition scheduled to depart… If I were going to travel to the far side of the globe and spend 8 weeks away from my wife and home, I wanted an opportunity to climb the mountain.” These flashbacks help to inform the reader on what is going on, and provides a history of Everest and the author so you can better understand the tragedy. If the story provided absolutely no backstory and was just a recollection of the tragedy then it would be a horrible book that didn’t make sense to anybody except the author. With the addition of this backstory, we understand how Krakauer felt and how dangerous Everest is, as well as tons of other information which was crucial to the understanding of the book.

I believe that Krakauer writes about Mount Everest and many other mountains, but mainly Mount Everest in a mystical, fantasy way because of his love for mountain-climbing, and his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest like his idols had. When he is on the plane, he has to get up and decides to take a look out the window. When he sees the Himalayas he is fixated looking out the window, especially once he finds Mount Everest. He is mesmerized, and describes it, “The ink-black wedge of the summit pyramid stood out in stark relief, towering over the surrounding ridges. Thrust high into the jet stream, the mountain ripped a visible gash in the 120 knot hurricane, sending forth a plume of ice crystals that trailed to the east like a long silk scarf.” Mount Everest is described as beautiful, but also dangerous, this essentially sums up what I believe he thinks of it as well. Krakauer, I’m sure, adores Everest and thinks it’s beautiful and magical, but I also think he understands how dangerous it can be. Especially after the tragedy, I think Krakauer still marvels at the sight, but now understands the major price that is paid to climb it.

As a reader, we experience Krakauer’s love/hate relationship with Everest and learn the dangers of climbing, but also the marvels of it as well. “There were many, many fine reasons not to go, but attempting to climb Everest is an intrinsically irrational act一a triumph of desire over sensibility. Any person who would seriously consider it is almost by definition beyond the sway of reasoned argument.” p. XⅥ This perfectly describes the feeling portrayed to the reader by the book, Everest is a feat that is extremely desirable, but also incredibly dangerous, so the only reason you’d want to summit it is out of pure desire, in fact so much desire that you’re willing to go against common sense, and just say f— it I’m gonna do this. The reader is made to feel like, Everest is only for the people who either don’t care about their well-being or are so full of longing that they’ll risk anything to climb to the so-called “top of the world”