Cause and Effect

One way that a story-teller moves the story forward is by relating the events to each other. This can take the form of cause-and-effect relationships. There are many different ways to describe this relationship: focus on causes, focus on effects, or focus on both. Sometimes an effect has many causes, sometimes only one of several possible causes is sufficient to have an effect. Many times the cause and effect relationship takes the form of a complex chain in which several causes create an effect that in turn creates other effects. In the excerpt from Into Thin Air, try to examine what happens and why. What are the causes of the events that happen? What are the effects?

• In this excerpt from Into Thin Air, we start out with Krakauer, who had just arrived at the summit of Mount Everest, tired and exhausted. He is tired and exhausted because he has not slept for about 3 days, has barely eaten anything, and also because the oxygen in his tank is running out, so his brain is functioning a little bit slowly. The second main event was that his oxygen tank completely ran out of oxygen, because one of the people who came climbed up with him accidentally released all of the oxygen. This was caused because Krakauer's teammate was also tired and quite out of oxygen, so he wasn't able to think clearly. Later on, the death of Hall was and the others were caused by the carelessness of the climbers, and also their lack of caution. They should have paid more attention to the weather that was worsening. The causes of some people's deaths also include the fact that there wasn't enough oxygen, and without oxygen, the climbers were not able to think and make good and smart decisions. For example, Hall was told that there was no oxygen left when there are actually two full tanks because the person transmitting the message from the camp to Hall was lacking oxygen and heard the wrong this, which cost Hall's life.