within the excerpt provided, Krakauer
walks a fine line between firm investment and journalistic detachment. He writes
with a certain understanding of the motivations of the major players, exhibited
in sentences like: “It doesn’t seem to far-fetched to speculate that because
Hall had talked Hansen into coming back to Everest, it would have been
especially hard for him to deny Hansen the summit a second time”. In this we
see his understanding of the intimate nature of the relationship between the
climber and his guide, one which transcends the particular venture in question,
occurring in the larger context of a lasting partnership defined by challenges
and allowances.
Due to the uncertain nature of the
story in question – there is really no “first-hand account” of the events
detailed – Krakauer is forced to use qualifying language (“farfetched” “speculate”)
which while distancing himself from the role of a totally authoritative
narrator, simultaneously allow him to position himself as the-person-who-probably-knows-better-than-anyone-else-does-so-you-might-as-well-take-his-word-for-it.
This alters the utterly definitive statements that he makes (ie: “It was an act
of heroism that would cost Harris his life”), in that they move from the realm
of the kind of corny to an area of real gravity. A reader is prompted to
forgive that which might otherwise be viewed as heavy handed and is instead
invited to “enjoy” the offerings in shades of finality and inevitability.
Finally, Krakauer does an excellent
job of revealing what he knows in uneven ways. The death of Harris is revealed unceremoniously
and definitively as a means of further amplifying the drama surrounding Hall.
The latter man’s death however is not fully revealed until the final sentence of
the chapter in which his body is found half covered by a snow drift and even
then, the words dead, death, dying are never used in relation to him. Rather,
Krakauer chooses to intimate the inevitable, saying as the chapter began to
draw towards its close, “In truth, Rob
had never even left the South Summit”.
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