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Into the wild short essay
A essay about into the wild
A essay about into the wild
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What was Krakauer thinking when he was talking about Chris McCandless? In the Alaskan wilderness, Peter Christian has described numerous young men who acted and ventured there similar to McCandless. If there are people who had ventured and faced death in the Alaskan wilderness just like McCandless, would Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” be different in regards to quality and character if Krakauer had used any other individual as the main character of his book? Based on how Krakauer wrote his book, Chris McCandless had an interesting story of his travels as told by Krakauer. Despite being an enigmatic and intellectual, however, McCandless shows that he is merely another young adult who had made bad decisions. First of all, the cause of Chris’s bad decisions falls on his character. For example, he refuses to accept help from others. Throughout Krakauer’s book, Chris refuses to accept any advice given from the people he met, especially those such as Westerberg and Jan Burres. His stubborn approach towards people shows his independent attitude throughout the story as he is determined to face obstacles independently. This is most evident in Chris’s time with Jan Burres. During the end of the fifth chapter, he displays his …show more content…
In reality, Chris’s death was not really a big deal and was rather exaggerated by Krakauer than it needed to be. The main reason was Chris’s unpreparedness. Due to Chris’s inexperience in handling the challenges the wilderness had to offer, Chris was left vulnerable and, as a result looked foolish. Peter also criticized Chris’s approach to handling resources as “just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate” (Christian 2). Krakauer describes Chris’s experience to be more important compared to the typical adventurer, and shows authorial bias in favor of Chris, making Chris’s adventures seem more innocent and accidental. However, Christian shows an impartial attitude towards Chris and criticizes Chris’s
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong somewhere and just wanted to get away? Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is about a guy named Christopher who called himself Alex, and he just wanted to get away from his life and live how he wanted. Christopher McCandless stands out because he shows his emotions thoroughly and goes through with what he thinks. McCandless can be described as a thrill seeker, arrogant, and courageous.
In the book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer wrote about Christopher McCandless, a nature lover in search for independence, in a mysterious and hopeful experience. Even though Krakauer tells us McCandless was going to die from the beginning, he still gave him a chance for survival. As a reader I wanted McCandless to survive. In Into the Wild, Krakauer gave McCandless a unique perspective. He was a smart and unique person that wanted to be completely free from society. Krakauer included comments from people that said McCandless was crazy, and his death was his own mistake. However, Krakauer is able to make him seem like a brave person. The connections between other hikers and himself helped in the explanation of McCandless’s rational actions. Krakauer is able to make McCandless look like a normal person, but unique from this generation. In order for Krakauer to make Christopher McCandless not look like a crazy person, but a special person, I will analyze the persuading style that Krakauer used in Into the Wild that made us believe McCandless was a regular young adult.
As evidenced by Into the Wild, Krakauer admires Chris for his ideals and attempt to live off the land. Krakauer makes it clear that Chris wasn’t mentally ill or narcissistic, but instead courageous. In fact, he praises Chris for choosing a life outside the confines of society. Krakauer flat out states, “...[Chris] wasn’t quite as reckless or incompetent as he has been made out to be” (Krakauer 194). No matter the mistake that others hold Chris accountable for making, he offers a rebuttal in support of McCandless. Even though it’s a known fact that when Chris walked into the wilderness he was ill prepared in the sense of lacking necessary provisions such as a map and large caliber rifle, Krakauer asserts, “It is hardly unusual for a young
In the beginning, we learn that Chris McCandless is not like anyone else. Chris planned to “live off the land for a few months” (Krakauer 4). My initial thought was that Chris planned to die at his destination, after exploring the beauty of the area. I say this because Chris brought a minimum supply of food and gear for a great adventure. The author, Jon Kraukauer, ended the first chapter with Jim Gallien, a friend of Chris, saying, “I figured he'd be OK…I thought he'd probably get hungry pretty quick and just walk out to the highway. That's what any normal person would do" (Krakauer 7). By ending the chapter with this quote, Kraukauer gave me an ominous feeling because we know that Chris is not just any ordinary or normal person;
Chris McCandless was a young man who attempted to escape the firm grasp of society, and to do so he embarked on unaccompanied hike into the Alaskan wilderness. In the novel Into the Wild written by Jon Krakauer, the author narrates Chris’s excursion into solitude, and the effects of his actions. Chris McCandless is mostly responsible for his death in the Alaskan wilderness.
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.
Christopher Johnson McCandless was a hiker who also went by the name Alexander Supertramp and ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with a bit of food and equipment, hoping to live in isolation. Almost four months later, McCandless's body was found, weighing only 30kg. His story shocked many people and got the attention of magazine writer Jon Krakauer. At First he wrote a small article in the magazine Outside that sparked a lot of controversy with the readers. Since Krakauer got a lot of attention from his article, he decided to do more investigation on McCandless’s journey. Krakauer end up writing the book named Into the Wild and explains with plenty of detail McCandless’s life before his journey to the wilderness. Now a days, most teenager or young adult would never give up the life they have, because the way were so attach to electronics and our surroundings, for Chris McCandless is a different story he gave everything he had in life to go out and live a life in seclusion that caused him his death.
Chris McCandless was a very intelligent young man and well educated. For example his sister mentions“Chris brought home good grades” (114). Even though having such important qualities he still managed to gain the idea in leaving a good life, to heading and living in a forest on his own. Chris had what people call a good life and family but he believed the complete opposite of what others thought he had. Throughout the story
Christopher McCandless was a man shaped after his rough, sharp-edged, family life. He was born in El Segundo, California on February 12th, 1968. Chris grew up in a very unique situation. His father, Walt McCandless, was probably the closest thing to why Chris left in the first place. Walt lead a very dysfunctional family where he lived and worked with his wife, Billie, which created a nasty combination and left a bad taste in the mouths of each family member. Chris’s sister, Carine, was probably the only person he had to a legitimate connection to. Later on Chris found out his father had been living a double life with another woman and her family. This set Chris off and became a driving motive for his absence from the McCandless family. Jon Krakauer, in a sense, was very much like Chris McCandless. Jon was a man who enjoyed the feeling of escaping from humanity to attempt some of the worlds most daring obstacles and adventures. He found personal pleasure in doing things that were unthinkable. He was a climber that feared very little. He bonded to the story of Chris McCandless by relating his past experience of Everest to the failure of Chris’s expedition. Both Krakauer and McCandless were born with an adventurous nature. Their beings craved being different and pushing the limits. For Chris specifically, we see throughout the book his struggle to push away the mainstream life that he lived. He believed there was more to life then just the 20th century fads that everyone was supposed to live. Which is what made people love him, was also what decided his fate in the end.
Krakauer first unveils the protagonist’s blatant unpreparedness and over-confidence as Chris embarks on his journey, hitching a ride to Denali Park from local Jim Gallien, an experienced hunter and woodsman. Gallien, alarmed by McCandless’ lack of critical supplies needed for his journey, “trie[s] repeatedly to dissuade him,” even offering to buy the young man proper equipment, to which Chris conceitedly replies, ‘“I’ll be fine with what I’ve got...I won’t run into anything I can’t deal with on my own”’ (Krakauer 5-6). Tragically misled by the notion he possesses both the supplies and knowledge needed to travel into the perilous wild, Chris puts himself at risk before his journey begins. Ignorance regarding the proper provisions, paired with arrogance in not heeding Gallien’s
...en writing a book based on ethos, logos and pathos, it is very challenging for an author to stay completely objective. In Krakauer’s case, his bias comes out strongly in certain chapters, sometimes detracting from his argument. Some faults exist in his credibility and logic, but his use of emotional appeal makes up for what those areas lack. Krakauer does an excellent job developing the character of Chris McCandless. The author brings him back to life with his descriptions and is able to make him tangible to the reader. The discussion over what McCandless's thoughts were when he went on his fatal trek will continue as long as his memory lasts. Ultimately, the readers of Into the Wild are left to form their opinion of McCandless, with Krakauer nudging them along the way.
Throughout the novel, Krakauer formulates strategies in his writing through the employment of logos, the appeal to reason. He utilizes this to allow the reader to learn about Chris’s personality throughout his life. “Nuance, strategy, and anything beyond the rudimentaries of technique were wasted on Chris. The only way he cared to tackle a challenge was head-on, right now, applying the full brunt of his extraordinary energy” (111). Chris was a person who would do things first, ask questions later in a sense. His compulsive behavior is accounted for when he decided to take on the adventure to Alaska. Moreover, it also led up to possible parallels between Krakauer himself and Chris within the second half of the novel. “When I decided to go to
In conclusion I think that one of the reasons Krakauer decided to write about Chris McCandless is the fact that he found so many disturbing coincidences about his own life that he felt obligated to tell Chris’s story. I think it is quite possible Jon feels guilty about having survived when Chris died. Either way, I think both men were success full even though they both had very different goals and outcomes.
Both Chris and Krakauer were at one time in their lives hunting for something in the uninhabited world. Krakauer advocates this argument in order to prove to the audience that McCandless was not crazy due to the fact that Krakauer himself was not. Krakauer learned from teammate Eric Hathaway, “On weekends, when his high school pals were attending ‘keggers’ and trying to sneak into Georgetown bars, McCandless would wander the seedier quarters of Washington, chatting with prostitutes and homeless people, buying them meals, earnestly suggesting way they might improve their lives” (113). This exposed that McCandless did have a sensitive personality, which can be maintained with reasonable evidence of his excursions to the weak parts of town. The author also utilized the rhetorical device of logos within the novel. Krakauer notes that Chris was an Emory graduate where he had been a colonist and editor for the school newspaper, and distinguished himself as a historian and anthropologist with a 3.72 GPA
Honesty and truth were very important traits to Chris. The fact that a disillusionment happened to Chris was too much for him to bare, especially because it was about his own father. After he discovered about his father’s affair years ago and a half-brother he was clueless about, Chris was extremely wretched. His behavior started to become unrecognizable, “I saw Chris at a party after his sophomore year at Emory … and it was obvious he had changed. He seemed very introverted, almost cold” (Krakauer 120). He dealt with the pain in a certain way for quite sometime, until he decided he needed to go. To leave what was hurting him and that is exactly what he did. “Immediately after graduating…he changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions…” (Krakauer 1). His father’s affair was definitely a huge slap in the face that left him destroyed. Sadly, there are no step by step guides to how someone should process hard times and the wilderness was his escape from the