The author of Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer. The personality of the writing is adventurer because the author talks about being a hardcore climber in his twenties and even chose to go to Mount Everest in his forties. The whole memoir is about an experience that was supposed to be amazing, put the author way out of his comfort zone, created a challenge and a conflict in an unknown environment (for the author). The author uses word choice to create the personality by choosing words that are adjectives and describing every little detail completely. A whole page could just be about the author struggling to breathe because of his cough. Plus, the author uses words, like brave, because we associate those words with adventures. He is letting the reader know that the experience, however deadly it happened to be, was at least adventure-like.
The mood of the story is definitely serious, not humorous, because while the narrator tries to lighten the mood by showing the human sides of the characters, he doesn't actually say things to make the mood less serious. For example, the author said two of the characters were cracking the group up with their jokes. And that's all he said. He did not elaborate, he just continued with the story and how he felt about being out of his comfort zone on a climb that was out of his typical twenties hardcore altitude range. The story is a like a police report: what happened, how it affected the people involved, and who survived. Or didn't survive for that matter.
The author does use quotes and imagery (or hyperbole) to establish the personality. He describes almost every noun specifically, usually in a different way each time. When I read I can see almost every noun in the sentence has an adjective, or set of adjectives, used purposely to be absolutely specific about what it is and what type of thing it is in its specific category. To be honest, I started blocking out the adjectives once I got into my reading zone simply because they were becoming tedious and unnecessary (like when a textbook uses big words instead of using small words that mean the same thing-I hate that). *
Overall, I think the writing's personality is adventurer because the story is a personal account of an adventure Krakauer had and the imagery and style of writing make the story more suspenseful (which is a really important part of an adventure story).
*We know what they are trying to say without even knowing what the word means simply by reading the sentence and knowing what words usually goes there. It’s like they go out of their way to make us learn knew vocabulary or make reading a textbook "harder". One time in the book, close to the beginning, the author filled up and entire two pages with one thing about how he had never been above about sixteen thousand feet and two people died in the trip, while five were found. I literally just summed two pages of time up in one sentence. He's that descriptive. Anyways...
That's really descriptive Michael! I'm reading Into Thin Air as well, and I agree that the detail plays a huge part in the build up of the story. It did get a little tedious, as you say. I was rather wondering why Jon Krakauer Mentioned how many people died in the first chapter. Did you have any ideas? Also, Krakauer mentioning all the previous attempts of climbing Everest added some tension as well.
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ReplyDeleteGreat article and very descriptive. Just from this summary I have a pretty good idea of how this book will go [ and from past books] and your descriptions. This type of tedious straight explanatory book is defiantly a very specific taste but if written correctly by the author can be very enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with everything you wrote. I'm also reading "Into Thin Air" and even I have started blocking out the excess information trying to fully understand the pages I'm trying to read and overall the book. I also like how you gave an example about how the author was describing things so much that you could sum up 2 pages worth of reading in one sentence. I think you blog was amazing and I greatly benefitted from what you wrote.
ReplyDeleteMichael, you did an amazing job! I loved your details and descriptions. I totally agree on the part where you talked about how the author wrote this true story like a police report. I also had a good laugh at the part where you were talking about the part when the author said that two people made the group crack up a lot, and that's it. Yup, that all that there is to the fun. I feel that the reason Krakauer wrote the story like a police report is because that's how he pictures that memory in his head. It's obviously not a delightful thing to keep in his mind but it is very hard to focus on the fun parts of the trip if you knew someone died on the same trip. Death is usually more memorable than fun.
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