This book starts with the founding of Christopher McCandless’s body by a bunch of Alaskan hunters in a bus. The law enforcement then comes to remove his body. Jon Krakauer writes about this while writing for “Outside Magazine” and become very curious about this story. To find out more Krakauer pays a visit to a man named Wayne Westerberg, who says that he knew Christopher McCandless as “Alex McCandless” and he then gives a sketch of the young man’s character while in Carthage Wisconsin. He states that he used McCandless from time to time on his grain elevator and from his memories views him as participating, smart, and determined.
My list book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a nonfiction story explaining the life of Chris McCandless when he decides to leave his family and friends and explore life on his own. In 1990 Chris McCandless decides to run away from his family and the rest of society by traveling on a massive cross-country adventure. McCandless first travels to The Mojave Desert and abandons his car after the engine gets wet in a flash flood and refuses to start. He then hitchhikes to Mexico and buys a small kayak, in which he explores many irrigation canals and eventually finds his way to the Gulf of California.
In his book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the impossibility of attaining complete self-reliance, revealing how eternally elusive it is. Krakauer suggests to the reader that Chris McCandless is not an independent, young man capable of walking into the wild self-sufficiently, alluding to the idea that in order to reach an autonomous state, McCandless had to rely on other things to get him there. Krakauer supports the suggestion that McCandless was not independent with the notion that when confronted with opportunities, McCandless chose to take what was presented to him rather than work for what he needed. A way in which Krakauer expresses self-reliance as being impractical is when McCandless decides to “take advantage of [the bus’]
Some would argue that Chris McCandless was a reckless young man who made irrational decisions in life, however Jon Krakauer justifies his craziness by showing how Chris made an effort to be self reliant through his journey. By relying on his own powers and abilities to survive, Chris wanted to be independent and live completely on his own rather than being dependent on his family or the people he met along the way. Krakauer added a part of Chris’s journal in the book to support his way of thinking, “‘Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one’” (Krakauer).
The nonfiction novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer retells the bemusing true story of wealthy, free spirited Chris McCandless; also known by the alias “Alexander Supertramp”; who abandoned all his possessions and trekked across America, eventually starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer goes to great lengths to explore McCandless’s background and motivations, interpreted as both foolishness and moving determination. This piece intends to visualize that interpretation, showing both the poetic tragedy and frustrating avoidability of McCandless’s demise. The raging ocean, in shades of green rather than the usual blue, represent the indifferent, greedy wilderness that McCandless ventured in to. It’s chaos in ink matches its chaos
At the beginning of the chapter, we learn that many people who read the January 1993 edition of Outside felt that McCandless was mentally disturbed. The story generated a large volume of mail on what many thought was the glorification of a foolish death. Most of the negativity came from Alaskan citizens. Everyone commented on how there was nothing positive about Chris or the journey that he was taking. Nick Jans, a schoolteacher, wrote the most critical note to Krakauer.
Each man had his own goals and purpose for taking upon himself that certain project to accomplish. The purpose of McCandless's journey was he wanted to make it to Alaska without taking anything from anyone. Chris wanted to live off the land and not take short cuts by flying places or in his words anything that was considered “cheating.” Krakauer stated, “Chris McCandless intended to invent a new life for himself, one which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience. ”(4)
Chris moved out of his apartment in Atlanta, Georgia and hit the road, leaving his life behind to start a more ominous and adventurous one. The author wrote, “Five weeks earlier he’d loaded all his belongings into his little car and headed west without an itinerary,” (Krakauer 22). This shows that Chris went with the flow when he left. He traveled to different locations based on instinct and intuition. Chris took a huge risk by packing his stuff and traveling west because, if anything, he knew that danger was the one thing on his itinerary and could not be avoided.
Although numerous may argue that McCandless’s family problems served as primary motivation for his journey, there is more evidence showing that it was the literature he read while he was in college. Various events led Chris McCandless up to the start of his journey into the wilderness, but it was literature that served as the primary reason. That being unusual, McCandless lived according to “I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life” (Krakauer 15). McCandless wanted to go out and explore for himself a life in which he got a glimpse of in the literature he read.
Krakauer wrote about Chris McCandless journey and how in his journey he tried to gain individualism. In Chris’s adventure, as told in the novel Into the Wild Chris decides to change his name to sever the ties of reliance to his old life and way. Chris states, “No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he is now
He had read Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” and was so fascinated by what he had read. In the book Jon Krakauer claims that Christopher sometimes forgot the big picture. Krakauer states, “He was so enthralled by these tales he seemed to forget they were works of fiction” (Jon Krakauer Chapter 5). The author explains christophers thoughts on the book he had once read by Jack London. McCandless overlooked the harsh realities of the brutal Alaskan wilderness.
Chris went off after he graduated college and “lived off the land”. Chris would travel to the coast of Mexico, the plains of Kansas, and the dunes of Nevada. Chris went on a final expedition to Alaska that cost him everything. In the following paragraphs I will fully detail how Chris was reckless, selfish, and naive. I will also explore how Chris tied his life to the beliefs of transcendentalism.
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. Chris McCandless endangered his life many times in this adventure, and perhaps he was trying to find the happiness of the life through risking his life. He highlighted passages that he felt a strong connection to. McCandless highlighted one of the passage in the book “Family Happiness” by Leo Tolstoy. The passage was “I wanted movement and not a clam course of
If someone has not suffered a similar inner turmoil, it would be easy for them to misunderstand his actions and assume that he was just an uneducated, crazy man. Chris McCandless despised the phoniness of the world around him and wanted to escape it by engaging in a, “climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution” (pg. 112). These thoughts are similar to those experienced by people who struggle with depression. Chris McCandless felt that he was living in a world full of superficial beings whose only concern was what other people thought of them. His solution was to journey into the wild where he would, “no longer answer to Chris McCandless he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny” (pg. 18).
Christopher also knew that his journey could be dangerous and that he could be stepping on the edge of death. Christopher writes this letter to Wayne Westerberg the grain elevator operator who becomes McCandless friend, “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again, I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild” (Krakauer 69). After reading or listening to the story, many
