Throughout pages 200 to 333, the end of the book, Krakauer captures emotions and the feelings of others and himself in the situations that they were in through tone. He seems to use a combination of frantic, reflective, sorrowful, and confused. As the group faces the aftermath of the summit push everything goes to hell when a powerful storm wrecks havoc on the climbers who are already suffering from high altitude and exhaustion. In the morning when Jon Krakauer visits Beck's tent he is overwhelmed: "I was so shocked by his hideous condition- and by the unforgivable way we'd let him down yet again-I nearly broke into tears." This sentence truly captures the amount of mental and physical stress that the climbers were under. Climbers faced extreme exhaustion, frostbite, hypothermia, friends drying right and left, personal traumatizing near death experiences, and much more. Krakauer is also is shaken by his experiences when he gets to base camp and breaks down crying and suffers through the funerals/eulogies/reporter questions. This story included all of the key elements of a traumatic experience. The tone showed the chaos that ensues in the event and the horrible recollections and memories that follow.
Anatoli Boukreev rescuing Pittman, Fox, and Madsen was the favorite part of the book. Boukreev's strength and endurance appears to be superior to everyone on the mountain, not even including the fact that he wasn't using supplementary oxygen. This went along with one of the themes of the book that was perseverance and determination. Boukreev was criticized by Krakauer for not wearing an oxygen mask, but Boukreev managed to reach the summit safely and was out rescuing people in the middle of the night while Krakauer was sleeping like a baby. The Russian not only preformed this one rescue he also went back for people found Fischer and did much more all with no oxygen. His rescue shows that he is never willing to give up and that he would do anything to save them. Boukreev takes multiple trips out into the storm and doesn't stop until he finds Madsen and the others. Boukreev's rescue was sincerely my favorite part of the book because it showed showed how determined he was and how he was capable of pushing himself so much further than his fellow climbers to guarantee the safety of others.
I definitely agree that the tone of the last 3rd includes sorrow and reflection. The last third is filled with the tragic deaths of 12 climbers, and the sorrow that comes from the loss of those people. Krakauer intermittently interjects his own reflections about these circumstances and his personal actions. He explains his regrets about not helping more climbers. "The stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden self-reproach" (283). The guilt that he feels about not acting as well as he could definitely effects his tone in the last third. The end is full of somber descriptions of the intense circumstances that the climbers endured. The overall language is not upbeat, it remains a sort of ominous sounding book, which is appropriate seeing as the events in the book are far from happy. It ends on a very somber note, with the author quoting a climber about the death of one of the other climbers. "I can still feel her fingers sliding across my biceps, and then letting go. I never even turned to look back" (301). This really shows the surviving climbers trying to understand the events that they endured. It closes in the same sad reflective tone that can be seen throughout the end of the book.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that Jon Krakauer uses the tones of frantic, reflective and sorrowful in the last third of "Into Thin Air." Towards the end of the book the three tones appear frequently. When Jon Krakauer is awoken to the news that his fellow climber has dissapeared he becomes distressed and frantically begins to search for Andy Harris, his efforts ending in vain. Krakauer states " Harolds missing?... shocked and confused I rushed out to look for Harris...adrenaline surged through my veins. Tears welled in my eyes...How could Andy be gone?" This passage from "Into Thin Air" specifically shows Krakauer using the tones of confused, frantic and sorrowful. When Jon awakes he is confused by the news and then proceeds to frantically look for Andy Harris, ending his search in sorrow when no signs of Harris are found. Although this is only one example of these tones there are many more found throughout the rest of the last third of the book.
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