IXL | Analyze passages from Into Thin Air: Part 2

Read the following passage from Into Thin Air. In this excerpt, members of Krakauer's team search for their camp in the midst of a blizzard.

Beidleman knew they were on the eastern, Tibetan side of the Col and that the tents lay somewhere to the west. But to move in that direction it was necessary to walk directly upwind into the teeth of the storm. Wind-whipped granules of ice and snow struck the climbers' faces with violent force, lacerating their eyes and making it impossible to see where they were going. "It was so difficult and painful," Schoening explains, "that there was an inevitable tendency to bear off the wind, to keep angling away from it to the left, and that's how we went wrong."

"At times you couldn't even see your own feet, it was blowing so hard," he continues. "I was worried somebody would sit down or get separated from the group and we'd never see them again. But once we got to the flats of the Col we started following the Sherpas, and I figured they knew where camp was. Then they suddenly stopped and doubled back, and it quickly became obvious they didn't have any idea where we were. At that point I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. That's when I first knew we were in trouble."

For the next two hours, Beidleman, Groom, the two Sherpas, and the seven clients staggered blindly around in the storm, growing ever more exhausted and hypothermic, hoping to blunder across the camp. [ . . . ] "It was total chaos," says Beidleman. "People are wandering all over the place; I'm yelling at everyone, trying to get them to follow a single leader. Finally, probably around ten o'clock, I walked over this little rise, and it felt like I was standing on the edge of the earth. I could sense a huge void just beyond."

The group had unwittingly strayed to the easternmost edge of the Col, at the lip of a 7,000-foot drop down the Kangshung Face. They were at the same elevation as Camp Four, just 1,000 horizontal feet from safety, but, says Beidleman, "I knew that if we kept wandering in the storm, pretty soon we were going to lose somebody. I was exhausted from dragging Yasuko. Charlotte and Sandy were barely able to stand. So I screamed at everyone to huddle up right there and wait for a break in the storm."

Beidleman and Schoening searched for a protected place to escape the wind, but there was nowhere to hide. Everyone's oxygen had long since run out, making the group more vulnerable to the windchill, which exceeded a hundred below zero. In the lee of a boulder no larger than a dishwasher, the climbers hunkered in a pathetic row on a patch of gale-scoured ice. "By then the cold had about finished me off," says Charlotte Fox. "My eyes were frozen. I didn't see how we were going to get out of it alive. The cold was so painful, I didn't think I could endure it anymore. I just curled up in a ball and hoped death would come quickly."

"We tried to keep warm by pummeling each other," Weathers remembers. "Someone yelled at us to keep moving our arms and legs. Sandy was hysterical; she kept yelling over and over, 'I don't want to die! I don't want to die!' But nobody else was saying a whole lot."

Why does Beidleman urge the group to stop looking for the camp?

He loses radio and GPS signal in the storm, so finding the camp seems improbable.

He decides to wait for another guide because there are too many climbers to handle alone.

He is afraid that a disoriented team member will get lost or walk off the edge of the col.

He finds evidence suggesting that the camp may have been destroyed in the storm.

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question

Read the following passage from Into Thin Air. In this excerpt, Krakauer returns to his home in Seattle, Washington, and attempts to process his grief from the disaster on Mt. Everest.

On May 19 I flew back to the States, carrying two duffels of Doug Hansen's belongings to return to the people who loved him. At the Seattle airport I was met by his children, Angie and Jaime; his girlfriend, Karen Marie; and other friends and family members. I felt stupid and utterly impotent when confronted by their tears.

Breathing thick marine air that carried the scent of a minus tide, I marveled at the fecundity of the Seattle spring, appreciating its damp, mossy charms as never before. Slowly, tentatively, Linda¹ and I began the process of becoming reacquainted. The twenty-five pounds I'd shed in Nepal came back with a vengeance. The ordinary pleasures of life at home—eating breakfast with my wife, watching the sun go down over Puget Sound, being able to get up in the middle of the night and walk barefoot to a warm bathroom—generated flashes of joy that bordered on rapture. But such moments were tempered by the long penumbra cast by Everest, which seemed to recede little with the passage of time. [ . . . ]

Until I visited the Himalaya, [ . . . ] I'd never even been to a funeral. Mortality had remained a conveniently hypothetical concept, an idea to ponder in the abstract. Sooner or later the divestiture of such a privileged innocence was inevitable, but when it finally happened the shock was magnified by the sheer superfluity of the carnage: all told, Everest killed twelve men and women in the spring of 1996, the worst single-season death toll since climbers first set foot on the peak seventy-five years ago.

Of the six climbers on Hall's expedition who reached the summit, only Mike Groom and I made it back down: four teammates with whom I'd laughed and vomited and held long, intimate conversations lost their lives. My actions—or failure to act—played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris. And while Yasuko Namba lay dying on the South Col, I was a mere 350 yards away, huddled inside a tent, oblivious to her struggle, concerned only with my own safety. The stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden self-reproach.

Eventually I spoke of my lingering disquietude to Klev Schoening, whose home was not far from mine. Klev said that he, too, felt awful about the loss of so many lives, but unlike me, he had no "survivor's guilt." He explained, "Out on the Col that night, I used up everything I had trying to save myself and the people with me. By the time we made it back to the tents I had absolutely nothing left. I'd frostbitten one cornea and was practically blind. I was hypothermic, delirious, and shivering uncontrollably. It was terrible losing Yasuko, but I've made peace with myself over it, because I know in my heart that there was nothing more I could have done to save her. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. It was a bad storm. In the condition you were in at the time, what could you have possibly done for her?"

Perhaps nothing, I concurred. But in contrast to Schoening, I'll never be sure. And the enviable peace of which he speaks eludes me.

1. Jon Krakauer's wife

Based on the passage, how does Krakauer's experience on Mt. Everest change his relationship with death?

He is inspired to race against death and accomplish his goals more quickly.

He is forced to confront death as a concrete reality that affects him personally.

He is compelled to stop thinking about death because his thoughts become too painful.

He is motivated to avoid death by caring for his health and taking fewer risks.

solution

This is how Krakauer's experience on Mt. Everest changes his relationship with death:

green checkmark, He is forced to confront death as a concrete reality that affects him personally.

Paragraph 3 states that, before climbing Everest, Krakauer understood the concept of death but had never lost anyone close to him. After the Everest tragedy, however, death becomes more real to Krakauer because it has personally impacted his relationships, thoughts, and emotions.

These are not ways that Krakauer's experience changes his relationship with death:

red X symbol, He is inspired to race against death and accomplish his goals more quickly.

The passage does not suggest that Krakauer's brush with death compels him to rush into new challenges. In fact, paragraph 2 describes how Krakauer takes time to slow down and appreciate the simple comforts of home.

red X symbol, He is compelled to stop thinking about death because his thoughts become too painful.

Though Krakauer does find it painful to think about the deaths of his fellow climbers, the passage does not suggest that he tries to avoid these thoughts. In paragraph 5, Krakauer visits another survivor specifically to discuss the tragedy they experienced.

red X symbol, He is motivated to avoid death by caring for his health and taking fewer risks.

The passage does not suggest that Krakauer plans to improve his health or avoid risks as a result of his experiences on Everest.

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G.1Analyze passages from Into Thin Air: Part 1

C.7Analyze the effects of figures of speech on meaning and tone

K.4Identify supporting evidence in a text

B.New!Analyze the impact of word choice on meaning and tone

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