Into Thin Air Blog 3

       This entry will mainly talk about the tone of Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. In the third section of the book (I'm talking every 83 pages so this will be pages 167-251 roughly) Krakauer describes their achieving the slope of Mt. Everest. This is necessary to the post so you know what context of the book I'm talking about. They had no problems ascending Mt. Everest, but descending was, for some, literally their downfall. Five people have died in the last little bit, (sorry if I'm spoiling anything) and there are still about ten people stuck on the highest parts of the mountain in forty knot wind. (For those who don't know, that's pretty serious, especially with ice and snow being blown everywhere.) Krakauer, up until now, has kept the story pretty much how he felt in the experience. It mainly reflected his determination, high spirits, and the occasional foreboding experience. Phrases like, "I'm not going to get killed," and "...seemed generally happy to see me," hinted at the upcoming disaster and showed how he was keeping the inevitable question of fate out of his mind. (These were used respectively.) Krakauer lets the reader know that something bad will happen, but with all the foreshadowing and all of the predictions that something would go wrong, the reader is still tense and deaths and perilous experiences happen around every corner. Rob Hall, the leader of the excursion, voiced numerous thoughts and predictions, all of which were true. "With all these inexperienced people on the mountain at once, somethings bound to go wrong," said Hall when discussing a group on inexperienced South African climbers and a group of Taiwanese climbers.
           Krakauer generally kept the mood to exactly how he felt using detailed imagery and descriptive thoughts. He mainly tried to keep his sense of dread away. Then people started dying. I see the perfect sense in this and in writing any memoir. Krakauer did his best to be as accurate as possible, but when he has to describe his emotions when people he enjoys are lost in a storm, or start dying, he has to water it down.
            Krakauer described his emotions through a slightly foggy haze, which is accurate seeing as he got some of the information long afterwards and had lost a massive amount of brain cells from lack of oxygen. Still, one cannot be expected to describe their friend's demise with as much detail as possible. If it were me, I would try to be as quick as possible, not wanting to relive that pain when those friends were dead. I think it serves a lesson in writing a memoir; that detail is good, but some things are better left undefined, for the reader and the writer. In the cases of Krakauer describing to the reader the scenarios of deaths, he tells the reader his feelings of desperation, then describes the scene with the least possible bias, making it more like an informative text. The following is a description of the leader, Rob Hall, and how he died: "...they found Hall lying on his right side in a shallow ice hollow..." That is how the authors tone changed from his exact feelings to an almost textbook-like writing. I'm sorry for making this so long, but I hope I did Krakauer justice.