Rhetoric of EmpireinJ on Krakauer’s Into Thin Air

Abstract

This study examines the narrative style and contextual elements in Jon Krakauer’s memoir Into Thin Air from a postcolonial perspective, with a special focus on rhetorical strategies adopted by the author to primarily cater to consumers of western media.In my research, I make use of a range of critical vocabulary set forth by David Spurr in his Rhetoric of Empire and Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes to explore how the narrator’s colonial gaze serves to re-in force and re-imagine dominant western narratives shaping popular mountaineering literature. The paper discusses the role of key literary devices such as hyperbole, epigraphs and intertextuality in helping the author realize his rhetorical goals. Likewise, drawing on concepts such as contact zone, transculturation, colonial appropriation, idealization and naturalization, I argue that the text is replete with such colonial tropes, especially evident in the author’s representation of minority groups and in his frequent usage of a language of purity and idealism.More importantly the author’s intention is to present a more extreme, individualistic and truly American version of mountaineering as an alternative to the outdated Victorian ideals of national glory. Keywords:mountaineering, Everest,contact zone, imperial gaze, colonial tropes, aestheticization, appropriation, debasement