Abstract: Unlike the other traditional Himalayan mountaineering novels, Into Thin Air, a nonfiction novel based on American mountaineer, writer Jon Krakauer’s experience in the1996Mt. Everest disaster, anchors ethical issues in what is known as the “death zone”, an area with an altitude above7, 600meters, focuses its depiction on the dilemmatic ethical choices faced by the alpinists. By linking the “untenable morality” of the Japanese alpinists with the symbolic significance of the climbing rope, Krakauer tries to convey his implicit worry over the diminishing trust among people in the wake of the sweeping commercialization on Mt. Everest. To Krakauer, the “short-roping incident” seems to be the Sherpa leader’s selective failure to prioritize the order of duties in the “serious games” between the East, the West, which is, in essence, both an anomie of ethical responsibility, a metaphor of the Sherpa people’s living conditions. Furthermore, as to the author who has been dangling between his double ethical identities as a traditional elite mountaineer, a commercial client, the “survivor’s guilt” is the aftermath of his ethical choice and, particularly, the inevitable consequence of his feminized masculinity. Krakauer’s contemplation of mountaineering ethics turns Into Thin Air into the most critical, enlightening spiritual inquiry in contemporary mountaineering literature, highlights the moral responsibility, obligation of literature

Key words: Into Thin Air, Krakauer, Mountaineering literature, mountaineer, ethical choices