Into the Wild: Comparing the Book to the Movie

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Recommended: Comparing into the wild book and movie

Everybody expects to see the best parts of the book when going to see a movie that is based on a book, but most of the time “The book is better than the movie” and that is what happened in Into the Wild. The movie’s theme is somehow same but the way it is presented quite different than the book. The book Into The Wild, is a travel essay written by Jon Krakauer. It is about a young suburban man from a well to do family who hitched hiked to Alaska without informing his family. He was Christopher Johnson McCandless, a fine man but stubborn with his own idealism. He disappeared immediately after graduating from college with honors on the summer of 1990, donated his grad school fund of $24,000 to Oxfam, abandoned his car and belongings, burnt all the cash and identity, changed his name into Alexander Supertramp and started wandering across Northern California. He worked in several places, made new friends, and lived where people welcomed him. Finally he reaches Alaska, his dreamland. He was found by moose hunters dead in the bus 142. He was very much influenced by Leo Tolstoy who gave up his wealth and wandered into woods. He actually avoided his parents and the social surrounding but unfortunately he died lack of topographic map, flooding in the river and eating the moldy seeds. Krakauer portrays Chris as a gloomy, grudge-holding, very unlike the happy wanderer of the film. The movie excluded essential parts from the book and concentrates on Chris’s quest. It focuses more on Chris being adventurous, friendly, warm yet resentful towards his parents while Krakauer shows other side of Chris.

However, the movie directed by Sean Penn was based on the book which was Chris’s life between college graduation and death; it focused on his i...

... middle of paper ...

...ct of poor judgment.

In the end, Penn tried to make the movie more positive than negative by eliminating the dark sides from the book but as a reader I felt movie would have been better if Penn added some important details which would have satisfied readers like me and would say the movie is excellent. He was showing the adventurous journey of Chris which was one of the causes of his resentment towards his parents but was not able to execute Krakuer’s deeper meaning of the book and his perspective of the wild. People should not take idealism too far because then one can only harm oneself and in the wilderness like Alaska there is no return back if one does not have reality check.

Works Cited

Into the Wild. Dir. Sean Penn. Paramount Vintage. 2007.

Krakauer Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Book, February 1997. Print.

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