Into Thin Air

By: John Krakauer Jacob Gilbert

Words: 693

The book, Into Thin Air by John Krakauer is a story of the ascent of Mt. Everest by a group of strangers who must put all of their trust into each other in order to make it back alive. Loyalty is the central theme in this book, because without it, you die, and with it, you live. The book Huckleberry Finn is another book whose main theme is loyalty. In Huck though, the bond between Huck and the escaped slave Jim, is what allows them to keep each other safe and keep them from being caught. Throughout the story, Krakauer repeatedly emphasizes the importance of loyalty and trust in ones teammates. He says, In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber s actions can affect the welfare of the entire team. (p.47). Since Krakauer is acting as a guide on this expedition up Everest, he does not know the people that he is climbing with and therefore he does not have a bond with them. As the team climbs higher up the mountain, they begin to experience altitude sickness, hypoxia and other ailments that occur at those high elevations. The people must rely on each other to help each other out and, as the reader discovers, those who are loyal to each other survive, while the ones who do not stick together and trust one another end up dying. In one heroic attempt, Andy Harris loyalty to two of his fellow climbers leads to his death as he becomes stranded attempting to bring them oxygen. This shows the extent to which that bond of loyalty acts upon the climbers, because some are willing to sacrifice their lives to help out their teammates. Krakauer s main reasons for not placing great faith in his fellow climbers are that they are complete strangers to him. Also, most of the climbers are inexperienced adventurers who are there for challenge, even though they are not necessarily qualified to make the climb. In the end, loyalty and trust

in each other and in their guides is responsible for the lives of the survivors. Without the bond of loyalty that the climbers demonstrated, this story might not have ever been written. In the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , the two main characters, Huck and an escaped slave named Jim must put their trust and loyalty in each other to keep themselves safe. In the beginning of their adventures together, Jim gets bitten by rattlesnake and becomes very ill. Instead of abandoning him, Huck nurses him back to health. This is an important early test of their loyalty to each other because it shows that their bond can t be broken and that both will do whatever they can to help the other out. Later on in the book, Jim is captured and sold as a runaway slave to Tom Sawyer s aunt and uncle. Huck then makes a plan to free Jim and escape, which he successfully carries out with the help of Tom. This shows the extent of Huck s loyalty to Jim because he is risking his dignity and reputation as a white person to help free a slave. Although this thought crosses his mind, it doesn t deter him from doing all he can to help his friend which demonstrates the closeness of the bond that these two characters have developed. The main theme in both of these stories is loyalty. In Into Thin Air the loyalty between the climbers helps them to survive and even makes one climber sacrifice himself attempting to aid his fellow climbers. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the loyalty and bond shown between Huck and Jim drives them to help each out, even at the risk of losing their freedom or, in Huck s case, his reputation. With that being said, I believe that the theme of loyalty and trust is best demonstrated in John Krakauer s Into Thin Air . The bond of loyalty is so strong that a

climber sacrifices himself in order to save the lives of two fellow climbers. This better demonstrates the extent and strength of the bond of loyalty.