Outside Reading: Week 4

Post #1: As we did in class with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, find one or two quotes from your memoir that you find compelling or telling of the tone of the story. Write the quote in your post, attribute it to the author, cite the page and the title of the book. Next, explain why that quote is so important to the book and struck you as so important.

"At 29,028 feet up in the troposphere, so little oxygen was reaching my brian that my mental capacity was that of a slow child. Under the circumstances, I was uncapable of feeling much of anything except cold and tired" Page 6 of Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

I think the quote is so important to the book because it shows that it is so hard to get to the summit of Everest that when you actually get there you are to tired and exhausted to celebrate or even feel good for a few minutes. I think this quote truly shows you how hard it is to reach the summit of the biggest mountain in the world. I found it really hard to believe that Krakauer didn't feel particularily grreat under the circumstances. I would normally think that reaching the summit of Everest would be one of the best feelings in the world.

Post #2: Summarize part 4 of your outside reading memoir book.
In the beginning of this section Krakauer's group makes there final accent from base camp to camp 2. They spend a sleepless night there before ascending to camp three and later on camp where a large crowd of well over fifty climbers have set up camp. Then the day comes to climb the summit. Krakauer reaches the summit before many other climbers but is to exhausted to feel really good about it. As he descending he sees that he is running out of oxygen and he is constantly frustrated by the traffic jams of climbers that slow him down on his way to camp 4. Andy Harris catches up to him after he reaches the summit and Krakauer points out to him where camp 4 is. By now the weather is awful and with many climbers running out oxygen, there fait looks dim.
Stuart Hutchinson goes out to bang pots together to help climbers find there way to base camp with the low visability of the storm but few turn up. In the end some climbers die less than one thousand feet from base camp.