Looking for Alaska is a young adult novel written by John Green. The book is split into two major parts, before and after. Miles ¨Pudge¨ Halter is a high school student who wants to move to a boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama which his father went to. Pudge is a shy, introvert with an intriguing talent of remembering the last words of dead people. He immediately connects with his roommate Chip ¨Colonel¨ Martin. Colonel introduces Pudge to his friends Lara, Alaska, and Takumi. Pudge soon realizes that his new school is crawling with pranksters who live off of their thirst for revenge. On the first day of school, Pudge is yelled at by a grumpy old teacher and gets kicked out for not paying attention. However, he learns to settle and adapt into the environment, which soon leads him to have the most …show more content…
The prankster culture of the school quickly lures Pudge into its trap, and turns him into a rebel. Soon, his life revolves around smoking under a hole, being tutored by his crush, and setting off fireworks in the dean’s office. During Thanksgiving break, Alaska and Pudge spend their time snooping into other people’s rooms, and eating a turkey with Colonel’s mother. After a little help from Alaska, Pudge asks a sweet Romanian girl with a cute accent to be his girlfriend, unfortunately she is not the girl of his dreams. After a camping trip, everyone gets drunk and suddenly Alaska goes ballistic and wants to go somewhere, and no one stops her. An accident occurs that leaves everyone in shock, and Alaska’s friends make it their mission to figure out what happened to Alaska. Looking for Alaska is an extremely monotonous and lifeless story which causes a negative attitude to form towards it. Finishing this novel, took countless days and nights, and many stares at a wall. This young
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer tells the story of a young traveler who ventures to Alaska in hopes of testing his abilities. There, he ultimately starves to death due to his unpreparedness. Chris McCandless was reckless and unready, and it cost him his life. He made dumb mistakes but altogether, he was a courageous young man who deserves to be praised for his bravery.
Danger has always held a certain allure... McCandless, in his fashion, merely took risk-taking to its logical extreme” (Krakauer 182). There was no way to stop him from getting to Alaska, he lived in the Fairbanks city bus 142 for 112 days which is now commemorated in his honor. Most people see McCandless as an idiot who took on challenges he could not handle and dies in the process but from a readers point of view McCandless is a man brave enough to go on a voyage to find himself something most people cannot
Into the Wild Essay 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.
Exploring the United States of America and the nature of it has been a dream to the many adventure seekers throughout the world. Long adventures like this create long-lasting memories and friendships with Mother Nature and the society around it. Chris Mccandless, a newly college graduate, gives up everything including his Family and possessions to fulfill his dream to travel the west and live in the wild of Alaska. Throughout his long journey he creates many strong relationships with the many people he met hitchhiking his way to Alaska. His ultimate goal was to survive in the wild of Alaska with as little supplies needed and without contact to any human being.
Throughout the novel, Krakauer uses strategies to demonstrate comparisons between himself and Christopher McCandless. These comparisons effectively show that Chris was sane enough to make his own decisions regarding Alaska. One of the reasons why Krakauer wrote this book was because he experienced a natural liking for McCandless. Ever since his initial encounter with McCandless’s story while working at the Outside magazine company, his affinity towards the young adventurer grew by leaps and bounds. This affinity came from the very similar experiences the two were involved in.
Into the Wild “‘ He was unheeded, happy and near to wild heart of life. ’”Christopher McCandless, pseudonym Alexander Supertramp makes the daunting decision to go off grid and live a nomadic lifestyle. Author Jon Krakauer uses fervent diction and descriptive imagery to depict McCandless’s turning point in his life and beyond to his final days in the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer choses a specific tone to narrate the story, not far from a hypercritical sense.
The very first page of this book we are presented with a letter from Alex, who is obviously leaving home. The letter I believed was a really cool way to give us the background of the story we needed to know on a personal level. This was our first look at Alex. He seems excited to be out in the Alaskan bush. Not too many people would be excited about that.
Into The Wild “Although he was rash, untutored in the ways of the backcountry, he wasn 't incompetent—he wouldn 't have lasted 113 days if he were”. This comment from Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild conveys his belief that young Christopher McCandless who is the focus of his novel may have been young and inexperienced in regards to the Alaskan wilderness but he was capable of basic survival as he had demonstrated during his many day’s surviving the brutal environment of the Alaskan frontier. After Christopher McCandless met his untimely death alone in a school bus down the Stampede Trail in Alaska, Jon Krakauer received considerable criticism for his viewpoint that Christopher wasn’t “stupid, tragic and inconsiderate”. He firmly believed
Throughout the novel, Krakauer uses vivid imagery to reiterate the necessary isolation so that an adolescent can find their personal self without influence of society by describing the physical action of removing oneself from civilization through regionalism. McCandless decides to go on his Alaskan odyssey to “no longer be poisoned by civilization” (Krakauer 163), in order to reach his euphoria, identity, and purpose. Krakauer illustrates with maps and describes physically, the way McCandless isolates himself along the Stampede Trail. For instance, as McCandless begins his journey to the Stampede Trail, he pulls out an old, crude map of the trail that is “seldom traveled, it isn’t even marked on most road maps of Alaska” (Krakauer 5). In other
One of the members decided to beat up Peter, Cole did not take this lightly and punches him in return. Unluckily a teacher sees Cole and sends them all to the principal’s office. Cole tries to explain what happened but his effort falls upon deaf ears. This is not the only encounter with the bullies that the two have. This time the gang tries to beat them up but this time they have a new strategy.
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.
Anyone can have a story in their life and can turn it into a book. Jon Krakauer wrote Into the Wild on what happened to Christopher McCandless and turned his story into a novel. Jon Krakauer´s structure his novel to let the reader have their own opinions on Christopher McCandless by stating the book is on his bias viewpoint, putting it in non-chronological order, and wrote about his own background life story, which is all important to strengthen Krakauer 's motive of writing his book. Into the Wild, focuses on the young individual named Christopher McCandless who hitchhiked to Alaska. Along the way, in his journey, he met new people and traveled in many places.
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.
Krakauer describes his attempts at climbing the Devil’s Thumb when he was 23 years old and compares it to McCandless. The credibility it provides is the insight and thoughts that McCandless might have had on his odyssey as a young man finishing his own greatest achievement. To Krakauer, “the Devil’s Thumb was the same as medical school, only different” (Krakauer 150). To McCandless, it is likely his adventure in Alaska was the fulfillment he needed after following his parents’ wish of finishing college. Both Krakauer and McCandless had problems with their father’s falsehood and losing the innocence that they once had.
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”. Saverin begins her article with anecdote- telling the unfortunate experience of young lovers and adept adventure seekers, Ackerman and Gros.