Post 3: Tone

As Into Thin Air concluded, the tone was guilty and horror.  Through the first two-thirds of the book, the tone was very ominous.  For example, on page 11, at the very beginning of the story, Krakauer writes, "None of them imagined that a horrible ordeal was drawing nigh.  Nobody suspected that by the end of that long day, every minute would matter."  Also later, Krakauer mentions to Beck Weathers that Mike Groom was on his way down and Weathers stays.  This would apparently become a mistake as Krakauer says, "In a day of many mistakes, this would turn out to be one of the larger ones," (199).  By the end of the book, all of the foreshadowing that happened earlier became real.  As Krakauer learns of the perils of the other climbers, he becomes horrified and guilty.  After Krakauer learns that Andy Harris had gone missing and his confirmation of his safety may have been a horrible mistake, "I fell to my  knees with dry heaves, retching over and over as the icy wind blasted against my back," (228).   Months later, when Krakauer realizes that the man that he had mistaken to be Andy Harris was Martin Adams, he became even more guilty, "How had I made such an egregious mistake?" (231).  Krakauer, despite having little to no control over the disaster, felt extremely guilty because he made some small errors while barely being able to put one foot in front of another.  Part of the guilt stemmed from the horror of having friends of his dying or being very close to death all around him.  "I kept imagining Rob up on the South Summit at 28,700 feet, his oxygen gone, exposed to the full savagery of this storm with no shelter whatsoever-but it was so disturbing that I tried not to think of it," (266).   Imagine some of your best friends dying and you are completely helpless.  The amount of despair and anguish must be unbearable.  While Into Thin Air begins as an adventure story, it quickly becomes a catastrophic story of agony and disaster.

After finishing the book, I remembered the first scene that also happened to be the first chapter.  The book begins at what seems to be a huge moment in the story; when Krakauer summits.  Being on top of the world seems like a huge deal so it really brought me into the story...it was a fantastic hook.  Also, the scene reveals some problems that arise later in the story like altitude sickness.  "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, " (8).  This shows the effects of altitude sickness, which is when the lack of oxygen makes your body begin to shut down.  Furthermore, at the end of the chapter, as stated in the beginning of this post, Krakauer puts a large clue that foreshadows the imminent disaster.