Questions And Answers On Jon Krakauer's 'Into The Wild'

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1. Krakauer uses epigraphs in Into the Wild in the beginning of the book by explaining who Chris Mccandless is, the story of him, and how it affected Krakauer himself to write this book. He puts quotations in the beginning of every chapter because those were the inspirations behind McCandless adventures. Those quotes show how they affected Chris himself by really pushing him to get these adventures, in some ways they made up Chris mindset thinking that he could be one with the wild.

2. Although McCandless was ostensibly morally opposed to gift-giving, he gave his mother a gift for Mother’s Day because he was about to leave to Alaska and he needed them to believe everything was okay. This was out of character for him because he made the decision to to refuse to give or receive gifts two years previously. I think if he didn’t give his parents those gifts they would have been more worried about where he was going and more into wanting to find him more earlier. But he gave them gifts and that showed to them that he was okay and all he wanted was some space and adventures so they allowed it and didn’t bother to worry about him till later when they haven’t heard anything from him.

4. McCandless was fiercely independent, yet he relied constantly on the kindness of strangers for food, shelter, and transportation, but I don’t think he is a hypocrite. …show more content…

I think that it is a fair interpretation that Into the Wild is as much about the people McCandless meets as it is about himself because through his whole journey they were there and they gave him more experience than he had coming in. Each person had a story of their own that they shared with him and that helped him out along the way. It is a little selfish to say that he was in this all by himself, but he wasn’t. He was socially acceptable by everyone and everyone he met cared for him and just wanted him to realize what he was going through in the end. They wanted something better for him then just dying out there

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