After many mistakes, Krakauer manages to piece together his own puzzle of what haopened to whom and when during the climb, but the questions he struggles with in almost every situation are "why" and "how". Why does Anatoli Boukreev climb so far ahead of his clients? How does Krakuer mistake Martin Adams for Andy Harris? Why doesn't Rob Hall enforce the two o' clock turn around time? How does Beck Weathers find the strength to literaaly rais himself from the dead not once, but twice?!!! Why did no one notice the storm that hit during the afternoon of the summit? Why do the South Africans refuse to help? Why does Lopsang Sherpa exhaust himself by hauling not only his heavy equipment, but Sandy Pittman, up the mountain as well? Krakauer really struggles and hassles with these questions, attempting to answer them in a variety of different ways, all of which are worthy of further questioning and investigation. Hypoxia, or the influence of high altitude on decision-making, perception, and memory, further distorts and blurs everyones accounts of what happened on Everest, and makes it even more difficult to figure out how and why.
By being under the powerful influence of Hypoxia, Krajuer no longer had the option of functioning by himself, but becoming a puppet to Hypoxia. I'm asssuming that once Hypoxia overtook Krakauers body, his brainpower and process of thinking clearly began to decrease, during and even still after the climb, giving him no right to to still try and piece together wha he thought took place on the mountain. However, throughout the book, Krakuer did portray himself as physically being with the rest of the climbers, but mentally separated from the rest of the climbers. Loke on page 167 when Hall made it very clear to Krakauer that he was to climb no higher until the whole group caught up, his thought response was: "I felt frustrated about wasting so much time and peeved at falling behind everybody else." It was clearly obvious that Hall knew that Krakauer was getting ahead of himself and was trying to put a hold on him so that everyone could say together, however, Krakauer was becoming irritated and wanted to climb at his ow pace. Somehow, this could've benn what decreased his consideration for others, increased his frustration, and then led him to criticize other people.
At the end of the day, Krakauer knew that it is unlikely that the other clients would be capable of helping him if he were to get stranded, and he knows that in order to be as safe as possible, self-reliance is essential. As a result, Krakauer often broke away from the group, climbing ahead of his teammates. He chose to avoid packs and traffic jams and relied on his own mountain climbing experience throughout the expedition. By doing this, I felt like Krakauer both helped and hurt himself. He helped himself by not putting turning over all his trust and life into someone’s hands and being aware of things on his own, and hurt himself by strongly letting his anger get the best of him while under the influence of Hypoxia. Eventually, individualism got the best of him, verbally wounding and hurting relatives of the deceased through a criticizing piece he wrote, exposed in Outside magazine. In the magazine, Krakauer, in my opinion, did not acurately address and explain what took place on the mountain. I feel like some of the things that he said were not thought out properly, and as a result he began receiving angry letters from people who did not agree with his version of what happened. One of the angriest was received from Scott Fisher's sister, Lisa Fischer-Luckenbach, who wrote the following in her letter:
........"What I am reading is a YOUR OWN ego frantically struggling to make sense out of what happened. No amount of your analyzing, criticizing, judging, or hypothesizing will bring the peace you are looking for. There are no answers. No one is at fault. No one is to blame. Everyone was doing their best at the given time under the given circumstances."
Through her words, I could almost feel the hurt and anger she must've been feeling while she was writing this letter, and also reading what was said by Krakauer in the magazine. Although, acoording to Krakauer, his intent was not to criticize any of the climbers, but to tell the story of what happened on the mountain and be as thorough and accurate as possible, he was still in the wrong by even trying to address anthing that happened on the mountain with anyone else, when his own mind and actions weren't even in their proper state when he was on the mountain!!
In the end, even though Krakauer did recognize the anger that he brought upon lots of people, and responded by expressing his "profound condolences" that's still not the point. The point, is that no matter how many condolences or apologies that he tries to give out, what he said, to this day, is still known and recognized by readers and people all over the world, and the people that died on Mt.Everest cannot be brought back.
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