Comment 3

Comment 3- Ryan

In response to Lucas,

I definitely agree with most of your claim that the tone of the final part of the book is a frantic, sorrowful, and confused one. Jon Krakauer really captured the essence of an unfolding mountain disaster using this tone. It feels like you are right along side the climbers, watching as they fight to survive. In all fairness, the climbers have every right to be frantic and worried about their own survival. They are in the middle of a blizzard on top of the tallest point in the world, and their brains are starved from lack of oxygen. Who wouldn't start freaking out? However, it's after the IMAX team gives the climbers oxygen that panic really starts to sink in. They realize how lucky they were to make it back to the tents, and they realize that others weren't so fortunate. As the climbers start to look for their lost comrades, each of them is plagued with intense guilt and sorrow. While they were huddling in their tents, their friends were simultaneously suffocating from lack of oxygen, and freezing from the 100 mph winds and sub-zero temperatures. "Below, the steep gray ice of the Lhotse Face dropped 4,000 vertical feet to the floor of the Western Cwm. Standing there, afraid to move any closer to the edge, I noticed a single set of faint crampon tracks leading past me toward the abyss. Those tracks, I feared, were Andy Harris's"(Page 229).  However, where I would have to disagree a little with your claim is that it seemed to me that horror was a huge part of the tone in the final section of the book. The climbers have just experienced the worst climbing season on Everest, in terms of deaths, in 50 years. The horror of what happened to them is just starting to surface. The climbers that are alive are grateful, but they also feel incredibly guilty that they had contributed to the deaths of others. The horror that they felt during the disaster is nothing compared to what they now feel, realizing that people they had come to be good friends with were dead. Lopsang especially had trouble with dealing with Scott Fischer's death. "I am very bad luck, very bad luck. Scott is dead; it is my fault. I am very bad luck. It is my fault. I am very bad luck"(Page 272). There is not a single climber from that expedition that walked away from Everest unchanged. Every single one of them, even if it was involuntarily, contributed to the deaths of others, and this will haunt them for the rest of their lives.