In 1992, 24 year old Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions and decided to hitchhike to Alaska and invent a new life for himself. Chris had just finished college and many thought he was going to further his education but instead he took a fatal trip into the wild. There are many questions still unanswered to why he felt he needed to go on this trip and people will never know the real reason why Chris McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska by himself with insufficient equipment. Although many people think that Chris McCandless went into the wild due to literacy influences, the real reasons behind his actions were due to family problems and his risk-taking tendencies.
Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, tells the story of a young man named Christopher McCandless who decided to go and survive in the wilderness of Alaska without correct preparation. McCandless was a man with as transcendentalist-like mindset, an adventurer, an explorer, and a hiker. He migrated away from civilization and society with the goal of living in solitude and living his life to the fullest through nature. The audience was introduced to McCandless’ views towards society through McCandless’ journey through Alaska, and the depressing yet inspiring events that led up to his death. Krakauer creates emotional appeals to connect him with McCandless to credit himself as a writer, as well as to develop the audiences’ feelings of McCandless. Krakauer
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a biography that follows Chris McCandless and his journey through the wilderness while finding himself along the way. Chris McCandless died in the August of 1992 after a four month journey through places like Mexico and Alaska. Krakauer investigates his actions and analyzes his identity after his death, trying to find meaning within his seemingly unnecessary expedition. Chris McCandless constructs his personal identity as a man who wanted to be challenged and inspired by his actions and interests with people he met on the road, and his beliefs and values as a stubborn person.
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ―Maya Angelou. Jon Krakauer’s true story titled Into the Wild is about a man who decides to throw away his old life and escape the rules of conventional society. Twenty-two-year-old Chris McCandless came from a well-to-do family in Virginia and, without warning, abandons everything. He changes his name, loses contact with his family, gives away his car and all his money, and begins a two-year long journey hitchhiking to Alaska where he eventually dies of starvation. Although it may seem as though Chris McCandless is immature or reckless, he is actually rather admirable for his ideals because they allow him to live a life he is happy with.
Into The Wild portrays a man who went on a fatal unforgettable journey through the alaska wilderness. Chris McCandless was a man with great courage and the ability to live on his own made him more of a hero going on his fatal journey. Many would say he was foolish or not thinking right, but that is not the case. The case here is simply a man with courage wanting to fulfill is beliefs through his journey.
Jon Krakauer’s purpose in writing Into the Wild is to recount Chris McCandless’ journey, physical and metaphysical, from college in Georgia to his death in Alaska, through the use of factual, and anecdotal evidence. Krakauer uses factual evidence to establish that he is a trustworthy narrator capable of giving the reader a realistic scope on the events in the story. Jon uses anecdotal evidence to see into Chris’ psyche from the various perspectives found in the book’s excerpts, including how Jon understands the events.
The Alaskan Bush is one of the hardest places to survive without any assistance, supplies, skills, and little food. Jon Krakauer explains in his biography, Into The Wild, how Christopher McCandless ventured into the Alaskan Bush and ultimately perished due to lack of preparation and hubris. McCandless was an intelligent young man who made a few mistakes but overall Krakauer believed that McCandless was not an ignorant adrenalin junkie who had no respect for the land. Krakauer chose to write this biography because he too had the strong desire to discover and explore as he also ventured into the Alaskan Bush when he was a young man, but he survived unlike McCandless. Krakauer’s argument was convincing because he gives credible evidence that McCandless was not foolish like many critics say he was.
In August 1992, a decomposed body, presumably died of starvation, was found inside an abandoned bus beside the Sushana River in Alaska. Shortly thereafter, the dead person was identified as twenty-four-year-old Chris McCandless, who was from an affluent family in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. A tragic story, with a mix of a young man, his well-off background, and happening in the most precarious but highly noble place, always had an emotional pull on people’s minds and stirred up people’s curiosity and perplexity. The question, often asked by the people with desire to grasp the truths, was why Chris with a privileged life would have gone to Alaska’s wilderness to face the ultimate challenge of his life. Was he in search of something
Going out into the wild all by yourself can be nerve wracking and lonely. Jon Krakauer makes Chris McCandless seemed like a noble person who took the initiative to try to go out and live into the wild. The book Into the Wild written by Jon Krakauer, is about a teenager named Chris McCandless leaving society and traveling to Alaska by himself with nothing else but a bag of rice and a small .22 caliber gun. Chris is heroic because he went to Alaska by himself without any knowledge of Alaska and didn’t know any of the dangers of Alaska.
Throughout the course of Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild the reader can see that time and time again Chris McCandless is unprepared for what lies ahead of him, which is why he is not a noble man, nor should his journey be considered noble. While it is true that McCandless had gone on adventures before, nothing had prepared him for the bitter cold climate and the lack of food he had in Alaska. McCandless was not prepared physically or mentally and he did not bring anywhere near enough supplies for someone planning to spend the summer in the harsh environment of Alaska. While it wasn’t foolish for Chris to go out and try to find happiness for himself, it was foolish of him to have been unprepared to begin a difficult adventure in Alaska. Chris McCandless
Into the wild, is a book by Jon Krakauer that later got turned into a film by Sean Penn, it follows the life of Christopher McCandless, who graduated from Emory University as a top student and athlete with wealthy pushing parents. Instead of continuing his life as a working man of society and taking his offers at top law schools, he decides to ultimately completely disconnect himself from society and instead tries to find his own meaning of life in the wild. Shaun Callarman says “ I think that Chris McCandless was bright and ignorant at the same time.” and i really agree with him on that because
Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the novel and film Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, is not your average guy. Driven by his minimalist ideals and hate for society, he challenged the status quo and embarked on a journey that eventually lead to his unforeseen demise. A tragic hero, defined by esteemed writer, Arthur Miller, is a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on tragedy. Christopher McCandless fulfills the role of Miller’s tragic hero due to the fact that his tragic flaw of minimalism and aversion towards society had lead him to his death.
In the 2013 online article, “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem”, author Diana Saverin describes the Alaskan wilderness travel phenomenon along with attempting to uncover the ‘McCandless Pilgrims’ “root of motivation. Sparked by the release of both Jon Krakauer’s and Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”, numerous individuals pack their backpacks and eagerly step into their (sometimes newly-bought) hiking shoes and tramp into the Alaskan Wild to pay homage to their hero Chris McCandless. Filled with personal anecdotes and interviews, Severin’s Outside article takes a new approach Into the Wild commentary by directing attention to the lives McCandless’s story affected indirectly rather than critiquing on McCandless himself. In response to what appears to be a huge amount of troubled McCandless-inspired tramping stories, Saverin provides an unbiased rationale as a attempt to explain why so many are “willing to risk injury, and even death, to..visit the last home of Alaska’s most famous adventure casualty”.
Christopher McCandless, a 29-year-old dreamer, went on the journey of a lifetime to involve himself with nature and being truly independent. He had lived a life of privilege, made amazing grades in school, and even went to school at Emory College, getting degrees in both history and anthropology. Even though he seemed to have everything good going for him, it’s not the life he wanted. McCandless decides after law school to go deep into the “wild”, with no map, no resources. All he kept was a small journal and camera in which he captured and recorded all of his experiences in, allowing people for the rest of time to read and learn about his journey in his book titled Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. This impulsive decision that McCandless made would soon cost him his life, and most people would see him as being crazy for it. A man named Shaun Callarman, for example, believed that he “ had no Common sense. . . he was just plain crazy.” I disagree with this statement, however, and believe that Christopher had a very transcendentalist view on life,agreeing with most all of the great Henry David Thoreau and his ideals, but just made a few careless mistakes that would have been the difference between life and death.
Chris McCandless abandoned the modern world and chose the wild because he believed that he could improve himself through living in the wild, and found the true happiness of the life. McCandless abandoned his wealthy family because of his complicated relationship with his father, and he was ashamed with his father’s adultery. Therefore, McCandless believed that human relationship was not the only thing that forms happiness, instead a man’s connection with the nature brings joy as well. He also believed the habitual lifestyle was not what people were meant to do, and people shouldn't have more possessions than what they need. For this reason, McCandless traveled with little effects. In addition, McCandless thought he could found the solution to his frustration with the adultery of his father, and found the true happiness for his life through escaping into the wild.