Analysis Of Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

The book, Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, is a non-fiction narrative of Chris McCandless’s short but incredibly inspirational life. After graduating from university, Chris gave up his privileged life and took his adventure into the wild in full swing. By living off the land, Chris had pursued a grand odyssey of freedom throughout the American west, Alaska, and Mexico in search of peace, self-discovery, and solitude in almost two years. Tragically, his life ended during his final journey to the Alaskan wildness. To Chris’s tale of derring-do, People’s reactions varied. Some opined their criticism of Chris’s reckless act, some placed Chris’s adventurous lifestyle under close scrutiny, and others praised him as being inspirational

People, who consider Chris as a pilgrim, might readily point out that Alaska was Chris’s holy site because it was the place he had been dreaming about going for a long time. That claim is not totally baseless and unwarranted. Alaska is not just the place that Chris’s mind had hooked on, but also “Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives” (4). But, for Chris, Alaska was not such a primary location that he wanted to search for spiritual faith or religious beliefs, but a practical ground he could try out his ability and venture of living off the land, “He wanted to prove to himself that he could make it on his own, without anybody else’s help”(159). For instance, as soon as Chris arrived Alaska, the first thing he did was not going to any church or religious services, but to the University of Alaska campus in Fairbank to grab a copy of the field guide to the region’s edible plants before setting out for the wildness. Furthermore, except for declaring that “The Great Holiness of FOOD, the Vital Heat” (168) in his journal, Chris also expressed, “Disaster…Rained in. River look impossible. Lonely, scared” (170). How could Chris himself feel lonely and scared in his holy place? The very basic and fundamental definition of a pilgrimage is that it is a religious practice in which a pilgrim goes on a journey to a sacred place. If there was no holy place involved, then a pilgrimage did not