The non-fiction investigative journalism book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, takes a deeper look into the journey of Chris McCandless as he traveled to Alaska. Krakauer puts together the pieces of his journey through various encounters that Chris made, journal entries, annotations in his books, and talking with his family to discover the true story of the purpose of Chris’s journey Chris lived in complete isolation when he chose to go off to the wild, which ultimately led to his death, not recognizing the importance of human connections.
Throughout Chris’s childhood, he grew up despising his parents and not wanting anything to do with the lifestyle that they live. In many of the letters shown from Chris to his sister Carine, he talks about
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Chris came into the wild unprepared for what laid ahead of him but followed his plan sticking with it until the very end. Towards the end Chris’s story he reached the point where he accepted the fact that he needs help he writes the note: “S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP.” (Krakauer, 198) After being completely isolated for months, Chris finally reached the end of his journey and really accepted the fact that this journey should not have been by himself, but should have been shared with people who had appreciated him and wanted to help him along the way, even when they knew that it was a risk. Towards the end of Chris’s journey, he wrote down, “HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” (Krakauer, 189) Chris realized that by spending all this time by himself it was not worth losing everybody who he had grown to care about and appreciate. This led to Chris seeing how valuable the relationships were that he built with people throughout his journey and how he missed out on so many opportunities of being with them. Chris threw the relationships that he developed away, leaving them to hope that he might return to them one day. “I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life.” (Krakauer, 167). After Chris struggled to preserve the moose meat causing it all to go to waste. This action showed how unprepared he was for this journey and that through ignoring advice from people or listening to the wrong advice, he was already setting himself up for failure. Even though Chris had the drive to do everything by himself and isolating himself from the toxic society that he grew up in, he failed to see how he didn’t have to go to such extremes to be able to achieve what he had wanted out of life - to live a life where money was not what defined people, but where who somebody was would define
In John Krakauer’s novel Into The Wild, the reader follows the life of a young man who, upon learning of his father’s infidelity and bigamy, seems to go off the deep end, isolating himself by traveling into the wild country of Alaska, unprepared for survival, where he died of starvation at 67 pounds.
The epigraphs presented by Krakauer before each chapter of the memoir Into the Wild dive deep into the life of Chris McCandless before and after his journey into the Alaskan wilderness. They compare him to famous “coming of age characters” and specific ideas written by some of his favorite philosophers. These give the reader a stronger sense of who Chris was and why he made the decision to ultimately walk alone into the wild.
Familial conflict is inevitable in all families, but will naturally fade as time passes because of the heavy influence of family life. However, more stubborn families will not be able to reconcile as easily, or sometimes never. In Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer relates to the rigid relationship Chris McCandless has with his family, with the exception of Carine.
Jon Krakauer, fascinated by a young man in April 1992 who hitchhiked to Alaska and lived alone in the wild for four months before his decomposed body was discovered, writes the story of Christopher McCandless, in his national bestseller: Into the Wild. McCandless was always a unique and intelligent boy who saw the world differently. Into the Wild explores all aspects of McCandless’s life in order to better understand the reason why a smart, social boy, from an upper class family would put himself in extraordinary peril by living off the land in the Alaskan Bush. McCandless represents the true tragic hero that Aristotle defined. Krakauer depicts McCandless as a tragic hero by detailing his unique and perhaps flawed views on society, his final demise in the Alaskan Bush, and his recognition of the truth, to reveal that pure happiness requires sharing it with others.
He let so many people get close to him knowing he was only going to leave. It wasn’t just strangers that he met along the way, Chris also encountered his very own family. He held all their mail without answering, then left them without a trace for them to worry sick about where he may be and if he is or is not safe. No matter how much you disagree with your parents it is in no way acceptable to run away with no notice of when or if you’ll ever return. Not only did he withhold his whereabouts from his parents, Chris refused to tell his younger sister, Carine, either. He didn’t want his parents finding out where he was through Carine so he didn’t respond to any of them. His mother, Billie McCandless, recalls, “It made [his father and me] very, very worried,”(22). It wasn’t fair of him to do to them. Several of the friends Chris met on the road tried to get him to call home and tell his parents that he’s alive and well. He refused every time. It would remind one of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum and denying their parents attention. This proves Chris’s lack of maturity to take responsibility for his actions, including the acquiring proper equipment and admitting when he should have just called home. He was, in no way, mature enough to make it out in the wild
Sometimes a character may be pushed over the edge by our materialistic society to discover his/her true roots, which can only be found by going back to nature where monetary status was not important. Chris McCandless leaves all his possessions and begins a trek across the Western United States, which eventually brings him to the place of his demise-Alaska. Jon Krakauer makes you feel like you are with Chris on his journey and uses exerts from various authors such as Thoreau, London, and Tolstoy, as well as flashbacks and narrative pace and even is able to parallel the adventures of Chris to his own life as a young man in his novel Into the Wild. Krakauer educates himself of McCandless’ story by talking to the people that knew Chris the best. These people were not only his family but the people he met on the roads of his travels- they are the ones who became his road family.
"Into the Wild" is written by an American best-selling author Jon Krakauer, the "outdoor" magazine columnist,a mountaineer as well. As soon as published ,the book was on "the New York Times' bestseller list for more than two years, winning the Outstanding Adventure class writers praise for Jon Krakauer.
In chapter 5 of Jon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild, he refers to specific groups of people as “Plastic People.” This phrase refers to people that act fake, or say things to people when they actually are thinking something different about them. Since Chris lives his life on the edge and doesn’t like the settle down he probably considers make people plastic. “On the face of it, `Bullhead City doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would appeal to an adherent of Thoreau and Tolstoy, an ideologue who expressed nothing but contempt for the bourgeois trappings of mainstream America.” (39) Chris probably sees many of the bourgeois or middle class families as “Plastic People” because they live in much different ways than he does. He may also see
I chose the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer because it intrigued me with the controversy regarding this true story. Into the Wild is about young college educated man named Chris who decides to leave everything he has in society to go hitchhike across the United States. Specifically, he wants to be able to live off of the land in Alaska. Throughout his life, Chris was well loved by his family and friends, as well as by the people he met on his adventure. From an early age, he didn’t feel like he belonged in society. He struggled with this sense of integration. This is why he found solace in nature. Chris was always interested in outdoors as he frequently went on hiking trips and ran almost everyday. Although he complied with it for years,
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
In 1992, Christopher McCandless set off on an odyssey into the backcountry of Alaska, an adventure that had proved fatal. After McCandless's corpse was found, Jon Krakauer wrote an article on the story of Chris McCandless, which was released in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine. The article had received a negative response; several readers criticized McCandless for being foolish and ill-prepared, and showed no sympathy or remorse for his death. McCandless has been referred to as a nut, a kook, and a fool. However, McCandless was not a nonsensical man. In 1996, Jon Krakauer's novel, Into the Wild, was published. The novel uncovers more detail of McCandless's story. Into the Wild rebuts the idea of McCandless being someone who is foolish, and speaks of the many occasions where McCandless has demonstrated great perseverance and determination. The novel also proves the intelligence of McCandless, and brings insight into McCandless's psyche. The following examples will illustrate how McCandless was not a fool, but someone to admire.
According to others, Chris McCandless was inherently selfish. Please, let’s beg to differ, for goodness sake, he was a grown man! It was his life and he was living it the way he wanted to. Chris gave his sister fair warning. He bid to her, “Since they won’t ever take me seriously, for a few months after graduation I’m going to let them think they are right, I’m going to let them think that I’m “coming around to see their sides of things” and that our relationship is stabilizing. And then, once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I’m going to completely knock them out of my life...” (Krakauer 64) He knew what he had to do. He had to show his parents how they had made him feel his whole life. As a graduation present they offered him a new car, his old Datsun apparently was to their standards. Chris became infuriated. That was his pride and joy, how dare them try and take that away! They ignored what he was saying, as he did many times before, he o...
Into the Wild, written by John Krakauer tells of a young man named Chris McCandless who 1deserted his college degree and all his worldly possessions in favor of a primitive transient life in the wilderness. Krakauer first told the story of Chris in an article in Outside Magazine, but went on to write a thorough book, which encompasses his life in the hopes to explain what caused him to venture off alone into the wild. McCandless’ story soon became a national phenomenon, and had many people questioning why a “young man from a well-to-do East Coast family [would] hitchhike to Alaska” (Krakauer i). Chris comes from an affluent household and has parents that strived to create a desirable life for him and his sister. As Chris grows up, he becomes more and more disturbed by society’s ideals and the control they have on everyday life. He made a point of spiting his parents and the lifestyle they lived. This sense of unhappiness continues to build until after Chris has graduated college and decided to leave everything behind for the Alaskan wilderness. Knowing very little about how to survive in the wild, Chris ventures off on his adventure in a state of naïveté. It is obvious that he possessed monumental potential that was wasted on romanticized ideals and a lack of wisdom. Christopher McCandless is a unique and talented young man, but his selfish and ultimately complacent attitude towards life and his successes led to his demise.
The settings in the story have impacts on the theme of young manhood. Chris leaves his family and decides to go on a journey to find a new life. Christopher felt affected in his family presence so he sends his final school report to his family: “McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well-relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it”(Krakauer,55). He believes that this is a way to find his true identity and peace of mind, which he thought could be achieved by fleeing into the wild. Chris seemed to have a bad relationship with his parents, especially with his father because Chris found out that he had a child with his first wife when Chris was born. This fact is revealed by his dad’s old neighbour, “Walt’s split from his first wife, Marcia, was not a clean or amicable parting. Long after falling in love with Billie, long after she gave birth to Chris, Walt continued his relationship with Marcia in secret” (Krakauer121). Chris knew about his father’s affair with another woman and this made it easier for Chris to not care about what his family has to say ...
In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the human fascination with the purpose of life and nature. Krakauer documents the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man that embarked on an Odyssey in the Alaskan wilderness. Like many people, McCandless believed that he could give his life meaning by pursuing a relationship with nature. He also believed that rejecting human relationships, abandoning his materialistic ways, and purchasing a book about wildlife would strengthen his relationship with nature. However, after spending several months enduring the extreme conditions of the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless’ beliefs begin to work against him. He then accepts that he needs humans, cannot escape materialism, and can never fully understand how nature functions. Most importantly, he realizes that human relationships are more valuable than infinite solitude. McCandless’ gradual change of heart demonstrates that exploring the wilderness is a transformative experience. Krakauer uses the life and death of Chris McCandless to convey that humans need to explore nature in order to discover the meaning of life.