Into Thin Air Blog Post #1

    "It was early in the afternoon of May 10, 1996. I hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours. The only food I'd been able to force down over the preceding three days was a bowl of ramen and a handful of peanut M&Ms. Weeks of violent coughing had left me with two separated ribs that made ordinary breathing an excruciating trial. At 29,028 feet up in the troposphere, so little oxygen was reaching my brain that my mental capacity was that of a slow child. Under the circumstances, I was incapable of feeling much anything except cold and tired."
    This paragraph in Jon Krakauer's memoir Into Thin Air shows the reader the life-threatening and excruciating conditions of scaling Mount Everest through the use of very detailed writing. From describing every last bite he had to the exact height of his journey, Krakauer allows the reader to experience his suffering and strive to continue without them actually being present. Not only are specific details used in this passage, Krakauer uses adjectives in his writing to enhance and even exaggerate (though I seriously doubt that he was exaggerating) the circumstances that he was going through to the reader. Krakauer's use of a metaphor that was comparing his mind to a slow child's gives the reader even more insight on his painful ordeal. With such carefully chosen wording, Krakauer draws the reader in and shows every bit of his experience.
    The order of the words in this paragraph in the way they are so that Krakauer could show the setting and how it affected his mental and physical health. The previous paragraph gave the location (Mount Everest) and this paragraph gives the time. These two characteristics that showed the conditions of Mount Everest gives the reader where Krakauer was. In this setting, it reveals that Krakauer was starving and in need of medical attention. It was because of the setting that he was so desperate and sick. Because of the order of the words, Krakauer gives the cause to his condition.
    This passage is the second paragraph of the book, but it already stuck out to me. It can easily be said that the first few paragraphs are to capture the reader's attention, and Krakauer definitely executed it well. He starts out with him already at the summit, but not the way he imagined. He thought he would reach the top with some trouble, but not with serious damage to his mental and physical health. I liked this passage because it makes me want to continue reading the book to see even more of his journey and how he got to this state. Instead of going with background on Mount Everest in the first chapter (as he does in the second chapter), Krakauer writes about his hardships and misery at the summit of Mount Everest. This different approach really stuck out to me and it is definitely a way I would think about on how to start my own memoir.