Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Before reading past the first few chapters of Into Thin Air, the reader already knows the story ends in disaster.

• How does Krakauer use foreshadowing to hint at the coming tragedy? (topic sentence)
• Discuss 2-3 examples of foreshadowing in the early chapters that suggest to the reader that a tragedy will befall this group of climbers. Support your response with text evidence.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain what effect this device (foreshadowing) has on the reader.

2. The commercialization of summiting Mount Everest has brought Western tourism into Khumbu Valley.

• Has Western tourism had a positive or negative impact on the lives of the sherpas in the Khumbu Valley? (topic sentence)
• Discuss 1-2 ways in which Western tourism has had a positive impact on those living in the Khumbu Valley, and 1-2 ways in which it has had a negative impact.