Into Thin Air: The Refusal Of The Call

I am currently reading the BFG by Roald Dahl. It was been a very compelling read due to the many twists and turns in the plot. However, the story, in my opinion, didn't have a refusal of the call because Sophie was stolen by the BFG so there was no choice for Sophie but to accept her call to adventure and travel to Giant Country. Therefore, I've decided to revisit one of the old novels that I've used for this blog because it did contain a refusal to the call by the main character Jon Krakauer.

Near the beginning of the book, Jon spoke about his previous climbing experiences while much younger. According to him, in his twenties, Krakauer lived to climb mountains, aspiring to be a serious climber. However, climbing mountains took him away from the things he loved like his family and friends while it left him hurting financially. So, Jon gave up his dream to climb Everest, well, for the time being. Then, in 1995, Outside Magazine hired Krakauer to do a story about being guided up and climbing the highest mountain in the world but he was not to actually attempt the summit. At first, Jon was unsure about the climb because he wasn't in the physical condition required to climb a mountain of Everest's scale and wasn't ready to pay the large sum of money required to be guided up the mountain by a professional company like Rob Hall's Adventure Consultants. So, he decided to ponder accepting this opportunity, his call to adventure.

Those few days of Jon pondering his choice would become his journey's refusal of the call, even though it was short and he later committed to climbing Mt. Everest for Outside Magazine. In my opinion, this short refusal of the call was extremely significant to the story because it initially frustrated me, creating tension in the story and caused me to bond with Jon. Jon's initially refusal of the call frustrated me because I wanted to see him succeed. Earlier in the book, he had stated it was his lifelong dream to climb Mt. Everest but he was never able to because of financial difficulties and numerous commitments like a job and a family. So, when the opportunity to climb Everest arose for him, I wanted him to accept his call to adventure right away to ensure he would have a chance living his dream. This pondering over a decision by Jon resulted in tension to be built in the story as I wondered if he would accept this opportunity or not and in the end created a more interesting plot for the reader when Jon finally did accept his call to adventure.

This refusal of the call also caused me to feel a bond with Jon as I began to think about what I would do in his situation. I personally would never climb a mountain but I understood the choice was difficult for Jon because he was feeling nervous and unprepared for this important journey that was ahead of him. I felt the same way when I received the invitation to announce of the Tavistock Braves, an area Junior D hockey team.

Since I've been young, it was been my dream to announce for an NHL hockey team as their colour commentator. Therefore, this call to adventure was extremely important to the journey of my life as it would give me a place to launch my career from. However, even with all of the positives that would come with accepting this invitation, I wasn't sure if I would do it. Like Jon, I felt unprepared for the journey that was ahead and even began to doubt myself but in the end I accepted and have been the Braves announcer ever since while Jon accepted his call to adventure and began climbing Mt. Everest. This connection between us created a bond and allowed me to see the story from his view in a much clearer way because I knew how Jon felt as he climbed up the mountain. Maybe I didn't understand the cold temperatures, deadly situations, painful injuries or other conflicts and complications that arose in Jon's journey, but I was able to understand his feelings, thoughts and mental problems while traveling through his journey. And because of that, the refusal of the call allowed me to understand the story and Jon much better as I felt I was with Jon and the other climbers every step of the way.

The BFG: Crossing The Threshold

"The next moment, a huge hand with pale fingers came snaking in through the window. This was followed by the arm, an arm as thick as a tree-trunk, and the arm, the hand, the fingers were reaching out across the room towards Sophie's bed" (Roald Dahl, 16).

In the story The BFG by Roald Dahl, Sophie, a young girl who lives in an orphanage and is the story's main character, receives her call to adventure very early and is forced to cross the threshold because of it. The novel begins with Sophie lying awake in her bed, gazing through her room's window to the street below. Suddenly, to her astonishment, she sees a giant walking the streets with a large horn and a suitcase. She watches in amazement as the giant carefully opens the window to the house next door, pours the contents of a glass from his suitcase into his trumpet and blows it into the room. However, while Sophie watched the giant do so, he spun around and saw her. Sophie tries to hide once she has seen him but it is too late. The giant picks her up from her bed, puts her in his shirt pocket and runs back to his cave located in an unknown part of the Earth known as Giant Country.

After reading this far into the book, I realized the giant entering Sophie's ordinary world of living miserably in an orphanage is her call to adventure. By definition, the call to adventure of a hero on their journey is "the stage that sets the story rolling by disrupting the comfort of the hero's home life by presenting a challenge or quest that must be undertaken" according to our note entitled Twelve Stages of The Archetypal Journey.

Therefore, the giant snatching Sophie from her bed is the hero's call to adventure because it disrupts the comfort of her Ordinary World and causes her to travel to the Special World containing giants, near death experiences and the opportunity to save the children of the world. At the time of the snatch, we didn't know that the call to adventure would result in a challenge or quest being presented, but we later learn the snatch causes Sophie to become part of a plan to rid Giant Country and the Earth of the evil giants that eat children ever night and are unlike the giant that stole Sophie.

As Sophie crosses the threshold from her Ordinary World of the orphanage to the Special World in Giant Country, she learns that she had to be stolen by the giant, named the Big Friendly Giant or BFG, to ensure nobody would know about the giants that roam the Earth. And later, as I stated before, she travels with the BFG through his awful and dangerous life in Giant Country with evil man-eating giants and creates a plan to have them captured by the army of the Queen of England in order to save the lives of children around the world.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: Limiting Beliefs

Charlie Bucket, the main character in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is a young boy with big dreams. Every single day he walks by Willy Wonka's enormous chocolate factory on his way to and from school and smells the wonderful scent of chocolate and all different types of candy that are being produced behind the walls of the giant factory. While doing so, he dreams of seeing the inside of the factory and make his own candy creations in the factory that's been hidden from the public for many years due to Willy Wonka closing the factory's gates to preserve his candy creating secrets.

However, this all changes when Mr. Willy Wonka, the eccentric owner of the greatest chocolate factory into his world, decides to open the doors of his factory to five lucky children and their parents. In order to choose who will enter the factory, Mr. Wonka devises a plan to hide five golden tickets beneath the wrappers of his famous chocolate bars.

Charlie longs for the opportunity to visit the most prestigious chocolate factory in the world by receiving one of these tickets but his limiting beliefs have held him back from being the recipient of one of the tickets. The limiting beliefs that are holding Charlie back from beginning his journey from his ordinary world to the special world are his family and peers.

Charlie's main limiting belief is his family for a number of reasons. First of all, his family is extremely poor. Therefore, Charlie's ordinary world consists of living in a tiny house with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bucket, and all four of his grandparents. His grandparents sharing the only bed in the house, located in the only bedroom, and Charlie and his parents sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Also, it consists of three sparse meals a day, which is hardly enough to nourish a growing boy and limiting money that results in few luxury items like chocolate bars. However, once a year, on his birthday, Charlie gets one bar of Wonka chocolate, which he savors over many months. Since the contest consists of having to find the golden ticket within a chocolate bar, the fact Charlie's family is poor is a limiting belief because it dramatically reduces his chance at finding a golden ticket.

Another limiting belief for Charlie is his peers. When I say peers, I don't mean the people he spends time with or goes to school with. Peers refer to the millions of people in the world his age that are trying to find one of the five golden tickets while he is. Charlie's peers are a limiting belief because, like the fact his family is poor, they lower his chances of finding one of the golden tickets.

In the end, Charlie's limiting beliefs make it more difficult to cross the threshold in his journey toward seeing Willy Wonka's chocolate factory which is too bad. In most journeys, whether in books or life, the hero attempts to use the limiting beliefs in his life as excuses so they don't leave their ordinary world and cross the threshold toward their goal. This is not the case in this story. Charlie is more than ready to cross the threshold and see the many unknown wonders within Mr. Wonka's chocolate factory. However, when I finished this post, Charlie was about to open the single Wonka chocolate bar that he had received for his birthday. Who knows, with a little bit of luck, it could be the one containing the ticket that would send him on the journey of a life time.

Into Thin Air: Hero Study

"Every time I coughed, the pain from my torn thoracic cartilage felt like someone was jabbing a knife beneath my ribs, and brought tears to my eyes. But if I wanted a crack at the summit, I knew that I had no choice but to ignore my infirmities and climb." (Jon Krakauer, 214)

Before I can answer what qualities I see in my protagonist that I might consider being heroic in nature, I first need to know what it means to be a hero. According to our work with archetypes, we learned the essence of the hero is not bravery or nobility but self-sacrifice. He will ensure separation, hardship and must pay a price to obtain his goal. Some of the qualities of the hero are a new identity which grows as the hero travels through his journey and learns from various experiences that occur in it. Finally, the hero can receive this new identity and knowledge from a variety of other characters like a mentor, love interest or the villain.

So, after identifying what a hero is and reviewing what occurred in the book's plot, I believe Jon Krakauer, the story's main character, is a hero. Mr. Krakauer displays the many qualities of the archetypal hero like self-sacrifice, the will to pay the price to obtain a goal and the receiving of a new identity due to what occurred over the course of his journey. Also, Jon has some character traits that aren't stated in the archetypal hero summary. One of these character traits is perseverance, which was vital in Jon's quest toward his goal of climbing the tallest mountain in the world.

As stated before, Jon Krakauer displayed many qualities of the archetypal hero. First of all, throughout his journey, Mr. Krakauer displayed self-sacrifice, one of the most important qualities of a hero. This quality of Jon has displayed numerous times in the story from when he gave up his life in the United States of America to climb Mt. Everest in order to write an article about his experiences to when he was willing to write a book about the events that occurred on the mountain. However, it was when he was ascending the last few hundred metres of this mighty mountain that I realized Jon was willing to sacrifice everything in order to get to the top of the world. At the time of this final ascent, Jon had an awful cold and torn thoracic cartilage that caused large amounts of pain whenever he coughed. However, Jon wouldn't let this serious injury hold him back from achieving his lifelong goal. Therefore, Jon was willing to pay the price in order to achieve his goal.

In the end, Jon's self-sacrifice and the events that occurred while on the mountain over the course of his journey resulted in a new identity for Jon. With all of the deaths and awful things that happened while Jon was on the mountain along with the positives like completing the climb and surviving, Jon received a new appreciation of life and learned if he's able to climb the world's tallest mountain; he could do anything if he put his mind to it.

Through Jon's journey, he displayed many qualities of the archetypal hero; however, he also displayed a quality that was required in order for him to be successful. That quality was perseverance. Perseverance was extremely important for Jon because it was what caused him to complete his goal of climbing the mountain. Throughout his journey, numerous conflicts and complications arose and stood in the way of his quest for the top. However, through perseverance, Jon was able to achieve his goal and survive the deadliest week in Mt. Everest history.

Into Thin Air: Character Archetypes

" 'With so many incompetent people on the mountain," Rob Hall, my expedition's guide, said with a frown one evening in late April, "I think it's pretty unlikely that we'll get through this season without something bad happening up high'" (Into Thin Air, page 130).

Since I'm reading a book about an American expedition climbing the tallest mountain in the world and the many disastrous things that happen, there was obviously a lot of different character archetypes displayed throughout the plot. However, the character that most clearly showed a character archetype was Rob Hall, the head guide of the expedition climbing Everest. Throughout the book, Rob is exemplified the many characteristics of the mentor. I believe this because he aided and trained the many mountaineers that were ascending Mt. Everest in his expedition, gave the climbers a gift and provided the many heroes in the story, the climbers in his expedition, a test to prove their worth.

Firstly, Rob displayed the qualities of a mentor because he aided and trained the heroes. Throughout the book, Rob and his assistant guides aid the many climbers in their expedition by telling them where to climb and when so they can adjust to the air at higher altitudes. Due to this, the climbers became better prepared for their quest to the summit. Also, Rob aids the climbers physiologically though these climbs because through them the members of his expedition received confidence in themselves and trust in their guides.

Secondly, Rob exemplified the mentor because he gave the members of his team an important gift that would assist them to the top of the world. This gift was his knowledge. Since Rob had climbed Everest so many times in his years, he had vast knowledge of the mountain. Therefore, throughout the many climbs the expedition did to prepare for the summit, he gave his clients tips and suggestions. This caused the climbers in his group to become better climbers and become more prepared the many disastrous things that would happen during their time on Everest.

Finally, Rob showed he was a mentor because he provides the heroes in the story, his group's clients, many tests and challenges to prove their worth. In order for his group to become prepared for their climb to the summit, he forced them to complete acclimatization climbs. Acclimatization climbs were the mountaineers in the story travelling up to higher camps on the mountain and coming back down to Base Camp. They occurred many times in the book because they allowed for the climbers to adjust to the low amounts of oxygen at high altitudes. However, in my opinion, they were also a test provided by Rob Hall and his assistants to the climbers. These climbs were a test because they showed whether or not the group was prepared for their climb to the summit or needed more time practicing and prepared for their climb to the summit.

Therefore, I believe Rob was a mentor through his aiding and training of the climbers in his group, the fact he gave his mountaineers the gift of his knowledge to assist them to the summit of Everest and because he provided his expedition with numerous tests to prove their worth.

About Into Thin Air

After completing Norah McCormick's Dooley Takes The Fall, I decided to continue my reading of books that are extremely exciting and impossible to put down. So, I decided to read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. The book is about Mr. Krakauer, a mid-aged experienced mountain climber, who decided to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. His goal: climb Everest. However, when you're climbing the tallest mountain in the world; anything can happen.

"Into Thin Air is a definitive and personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest, Jon takes the reader step-by-step from Kathmandu to the mountain's deadly peak, unfolding a breathtaking story that will by turns thrill and terrify" according to the book's blurb. In my opinion, it's a book that will change your view and appreciation of life forever.