Genevieve Castle
Joy Roll / Zest ?
3/20/14
With the plot of the book being about the Everest climb disaster, the tone of the book has to be one that is honest, sincere and reflective. The last third of the book is extremely sad and truthful about coming down the mountain and realizing how many people are gone and how hard it is to deal with the pain of knowing what happened around you. Jon Krakauer documents his emotional distress by writing, "When I wobbled back to Camp Four around 7:30 Saturday morning, May 11, the actuality of what happened- of what was still happening- began to sink in with paralyzing force. I was physically and emotionally wrecked..." (pg. 257) After realizing that Andy Harris was gone, Krakauer feels emotionally drained, especially when he finds out about the rest of the people who were gone as well.
He later goes in more detail about his distress saying, "...my mind balked and retreated into a weird, almost robotic state of detachment. I felt emotionally anesthetized yet hyperaware, as if I has fled into a bunker deep inside my skull and was peering out at the wreckage around me through a narrow, armored slit." The amount of detail and honesty shows that the tone is obviously something of a reflective and sincere account of how he had truly felt at that point in time.
My honest review of the book is that it is a factually accurate depiction of the incident on Mt. Everest, and how it affects a survivor. Through out the book, I found myself constantly wondering what would be around the corner. The physical pain that the climbers went through but prevailed through was shocking to me. I couldn't honestly imagine myself having that amount of drive to just keep going and climb. The people who risked their lives to save others inspired me so greatly. All of the climbers who continued to try to reach summit despite medical issues simply because they didn't want to give up on their chance were so so so inspirational to me as well. I also give great applause to Jon Krakauer for writing the novel despite how hard it can be to write about a traumatic experience like that. Overall, The book was truly what it was worked up to be, and I'm glad I read it.
Gen I agree completely with your statement in that the book is reflective. After Krakauer gets back to his life back home he reflects about how the climb affected him, his peers and the family members of the dead. He talks about how Sandy Pittman was completely ridiculed when she got back to Manhattan; The New York times even used her as a joke. Sandy's son even started to get bullied at school because of her climb. Krakauer was also getting criticism from people, including Scott Fischer's sister who sent him a nasty letter which really made him upset when he found out even more people had been hurt after Everest. "November, during a visit to his home in Kazakhstan, a bus he was riding in crashed." (298) This man was Anatoli Boukreev who would end up having severe head injuries. As these climbers come back they can't seem to catch a break, and the whole last chapter is Krakauer reflecting on what has happened. He showed us just how hard it was for these people to go back to their normal life.
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