Essay On The Devil's Thumb, By Jon Krakauer

Speaker:Jon Krakauer, An author and mountaineer. He is well known for his writings about the outdoors. As a young man his primary focus was mountaineering which eventually lead to him becoming a writer

Knowing that the wilderness can be extremely rough, people can understand that there is only a small chance of coming out alive after a long period of time of living there. McCandless and Ruess are examples of these instances; however, Krakauer lived to tell the story. McCandless suffered from starvation and natural disasters. He indicated all his struggles in his journal entries: “he’d written “4th day famine” in his journal” (164). After his ineffective attempt of leaving, he “turned around …back toward the bus” and died shortly (171). Although Ruess’s death was never confirmed, controversies revolved around the incident. Bewildering tales of his death included “death while scrambling on one or another canyon wall” and “[murdered] by a team of cattle rustlers” (94). Krakauer on the other hand, was the only individual out of the three to survive his expedition. In his narrative of his attempt at the Devil’s Thumb, he includes the phrase: “The climb was over” (144). This short sentence creates an artificial tone in which he expresses a very emotionless attitude after completing the harsh odyssey.

John Krakauer has numerous perspectives in his story, “The Devils Thumb,” but one caught my eye, and that was that he climbed the mountain solo. Reading this

“As a youth, [Krakauer was] told, [he] was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. [He] disappointed [his] father…. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in [him]…confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured [his] undisciplined imagination, [he] pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession, and from the age of seventeen until [his] late twenties that something was mountain climbing” (134).

In chapters 14 and 15, autobiographer, Jon Krakauer shares his experience on the Stikine Icecap attempting to climb the Devil’s thumb. The inclusion of his personal experience helps the reader see how he can relate to Chris McCandless’s motivation to go to Alaska without having ever met him. Krakauer's experience illustrates the similarities of both of their lives and personalities.Krakauer describes himself as a willful, self-absorbed, passionate, and moody child who had problems with male authority figures. In his late twenties he becomes focused on climbing and begins to undertake more dangerous climbs. After a few years, he is determined to make the climb in Alaska’s Devils Thumb. Much like Chris, Jon will do the climb alone. He quits his

Krakauer starts the beginning of Into Thin Air by telling the reader about Everest’s first climbers and expeditions. Everest was a mountain that no man could conquer and over time it was the goal of many to become the first person on top of the world. After this occurred the commercialization of Everest sky rocketed, which leads thousands of people climbing Everest every year. In order for clients on expeditions to climb, sherpas fix ropes, carry equipment, and set ladders in place for the trips to run smoothly. Krakauer describes the characters with great descriptions to make the reader attach to them and care when their fate is sealed. Eight climbers were stranded at the top of the world, all at different mental and physical abilities. Saving, abandoning, and dying will occur all at once on the night of May 10th. Death grasps many of climbers and takes them away, but a few manage to escape from death’s

Despite his impressive record he had never attempted anything close to the scale of Everest, whose summit is at an extremely dangerous altitude. He even admits to his relative inexperience with high altitude saying, “Truth be told, I’d never been higher than 17,200 feet--not even as high as Everest Base Camp”(28). Krakauer also mentions how he has gotten out of shape over the years partially because of the lack of climbing in his life, making him even less prepared for the assent. Krakauer shows a definite fear of such a high mountain, referring to climbers who have perished in the past. He states that, “Many of those who died had been far stronger and possessed vastly more high-altitude experience than I.” (28). Even though Krakauer’s experience may be more relevant to the Everest assent than some of the other tourist climbers, it is nowhere near the level needed to be considered an elite climber.

Mount Everest is 29,092 feet tall. Imagine climbing this mountain with little to no experience. Would you survive? In the nonfiction novel Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer and his recruited crews try climbing this mountain. With many deaths along the way to the top, readers are quick to blame characters in the book. However, character stands out from the rest: Krakauer. In the book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer is the most responsible for the other character’s deaths because he recruited and dragged along inexperienced mountain climbers, pushed them harder than they should’ve been pushed, and watched them suffer.

After he got down from the Devils Thumb, the author, Jon Krakauer, had to decide what to do after he camped out. He smoked a supply of cigarettes and then his only supply of marijuana. While cooking a meal of oatmeal, he burnt down part of his tent. The tent he brought was borrowed from his own father, and his father was a a stubborn, volatile person. His father was a mountaineer and had encouraged his son to climb by teaching him how to scale a mountain and buying him an ice ax. He was an ambitious man and wanted his children to succeed and be the best in most things. He wanted Jon to either get a job in medicine or law, because he believed that going to a successful college and having a solid career is the key to happiness. Due to this,

“The way to Everest is not a Yellow Brick Road” - Jon Krakauer. This statement derives from Krakauer's thoughts and takeaways from his disastrous climb up Mount Everest that completely upset Krakauer's viewpoint of his lifelong dream, to climb the tallest mountain in the world. Krakauer recounts his journey while scaling Mount Everest in his non-fictional book Into Thin Air, that supports his statement of why the climb is not a Yellow Brick Road. Jon Krakauer's countless mountaineering adventures are the foundation of most of his books, including Eiger Dreams, Into Thin Air, and Into the Wild. Krakauer also uses religion as a base of his book Under the Banner of Heaven.

Into the Wild, a novel talks a young boy called Chris McCandless who was born in a rich East Coast family and traveled to Alaska by hitchhiking until he walked into the wilderness and then he dead. He loved to adventure, seek a place without civilization and escape where he lived. The author of the novel, Jon Krakauer, has similar experience to McCandless. Jon Krakauer climbed Devils Thumb, the one of dangerous mountains in Alaska alone when he was twenty-three, a year younger than McCandless. Krakauer almost dead, but he was lucky and survived, unlike McCandless. Krakauer spent lots of time and money on investigating McCandless’s life and writing this novel. Krakauer and McCandless are both eager to adventure and do what the normal people would not try to. Why? Because they are smart, have similar personalities and effect by their father.

Several expeditions set out to take on Mt. Everest In 1996. Jon Krakauer is assigned by Outside Magazine to write about the journey through Mt. Everest. It is Krakauer's lifelong dream to climb Mt. Everest. He has climbed many times before not never at such a high altitude. His team was led by Rob Hall, one of the most respected climbers of that time. His team is made up of many different people with

In contrast to Devil's Thumb, Everest had a jaunty and inspirational tone. Occasionally, there were words and expressions that signified moments that inspired and showed enthusiasm. Inspiring many people, Weinhemayer accomplished his dream and he was the first blind man to climb Mount Everest. Near the end, Weihnemeyer says, "His voice tried to say more but quaking words dissipated in the wind. Then he leaned in against my ear. "Big W"-his voice gave away tears, then struggled out in an immense effort-you're about to stand on top of the world". Then he quickly let go and hurriedly moved down the slope". Inspired, that is what the reader should feel after reading those sentences. Emotionally charged, that is what this is, these men finally

Krakauer’s first person point of view shows his thoughts and his experiences as he climbs the Devil’s Thumb. “The climbing was so steep and so exposed it made my head spin” (142). Krakauer can easily show his encounter with the wild and what runs through his mind. His first person point of view also symbolizes how McCandless could have felt during his hike on the Stampede Trail. “My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake” (143). Krakauer’s experiences were similar to that of McCandless’s because the Devil’s Thumb is abreast to the Stampede Trail and they went through comparable weather conditions. Not every day does McCandless write in his journal, so Krakauer must show what may have happened to McCandless using his first person view of his past. If Krakauer did not share his

From the beginning of the novel, the reader gathers how McCandless was an independent man who defied odds and went against society. We soon learn how Krakauer was alike. Krakauer understood the hardships and troubles of McCandless’ journey. At a young age, Krakauer planned to make the treacherous ascent of ‘Devil’s Thumb’. He had massive motivation; not a single man had completed the climb before, which only made him want to do it more. Over the time of his travels, he had met many people along his way. Various short and temporary relationships that only