It's Not Over Yet

Having read Jon Krakauer's account of the 1996 Everest climbing season of which he was apart and examining from several different angles it’s clear that it’s not Krakauer's intent to state a strong opinion of where he stands with regards to the events, the people who were involved in it or even his own role in the ordeal. It is not that he tried to state an opinion and failed however, but because like many things in life there is no real certainty about any of these things. His intent here is really more about the struggle to understand than it’s to make light of any understanding that he was ultimately able to reach, the point being that uncertainty is really the nature of life.

I intend to support my argument that Krakauer's intent in writing the book was to illustrate his struggle to understand far more than to convince the reader about the particular conclusions made by him. I will be writing a persuasive essay to present an authentic case that this was Krakauer's intent when he wrote the book. Doing this will allow me to present many examples from the book including examples of where the author states his uncertainty that ranges from his own feelings about things right over to actual events themselves. I will use other kinds of examples as well including those that show many cases where he is very open about instances where he at first reached one conclusion, then later on found himself reaching the opposite conclusion, and also times where he states conflicting feelings about the same issue throughout the book.

I also tend to support this essay by creating a concept map that illustrates these many examples, how they relate and how they add up to the conclusion that Krakauer intended to use his experiences to illustrate the struggle to understand. This is not to say that he does not learn anything along the way or even that he has no conclusion at all, but that one of the most important understandings we can come to is that things we thought were simple to understand aren’t as clear as we might have thought.