Into Thin Air is without a doubt a unique and outstanding novel that grips the reader’s interest and holds onto it until the very last paragraph. What makes it so unique is the fact that the story is told in the first person by one of the few survivors of the deadly climb. Each tragic episode is described in grotesque detail which is clear right from the beginning. The first chapter of the book catapults the reader to the summit of Mt. Everest, moments before the tragic chain of events that made up the disaster begin. The narrative hook is clear within the first couple of paragraphs. The narrator reaches the summit and then shortly after begins his decent where he suffers from a great loss of oxygen. He then looks down the side of the mountain to see a deadly storm building. The first chapter ends with the statement that the storm ahead “by the end of the day, every minute will count.”
There after the author spends time educating the reader of the background of the mountain and events leading up to what happened in the first chapter. Krakauer does a
good job of explaining how the highest point on earth was discovered with a short history lesson on Everest. Krakauer writes of the many expeditions that scaled Everest and how over the years the attempts were becoming more for the wealthy egotistical extremists who were in it for the publicity rather than those mountaineers who were in it for the love of the sport. It is this fact that is the reason for the author to join a team to climb Everest. He writes for Outsider magazine and was offered a cheap price to achieve his life goal in return for substantial advertisement in the magazine.
The climbers in the story are gambling with their death the whole time. Their chances of death are doubled when they are in the “danger zone” which is the top of the mountain above a certain altitude. Here the air is very thin and the effects can include brain damage which can cause cloudy thought. The climbers are in an environment where it is hard, and perhaps impossible, to think rationally. Some of the problems in the story were definitely life threatening and ye
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