Into the Wild (original) (raw)
784 reviews52 followers
This book is a wonderful cautionary tale. I will probably read it again with my daughter when she is old enough to discuss it. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the reason most people will read the book and see the new upcoming movie, is for a different reason. Chris McCandless (in the book, and from what I understand in the movie), is a hero and courageous for flying in the face of everything he grew up with to find a better way. A young man unhappy with the materialism, hunger, and waste in the world; angry with his father for not being a perfect father to him; intellectually superior, a fantastic athlete in top condition... and yet a young man who died because of his own decisions and his own actions. He cut off ties to his family, hitchhiked and worked his way to Alaska, headed "into the wild" in April 1992, and was found dead in August 1992 most probably from starvation. How wonderful to "fight against the odds" and "ask real questions". Unfortunately, Chris didn't really fight against any odds, he took the easy way out by cutting off real relationships. Chris may have asked real questions, but he denied real people the opportunity to answer them in any way, because he had already decided what was "the right way". This is not heroic. It is immaturity. It is tragic and sad, yes, but not heroic or courageous.
After reading the book, I think Chris died because he was foolish. Intellectually bright, yes. Athletically gifted, yes. But he had no wisdom. Wisdom has been defined as "skill in living", and wisdom is not always bestowed on the young and the healthy and the intellectually smart. The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. His anger and questioning drove him not to wisdom, but to self-reliance and an overweening arrogance in his own ability to "get through it". Well, we see the result of those decisions and those attitudes.... to quote Darwin, Chris is an example of how "survival of the fittest" applies. Chris was not "fit", therefore he did not "survive". But why wasn't he fit? He was smart and young and gifted in many ways, but he chose to abandon relationships and abandon those who loved him and create himself anew with no relationships and no ties. He walked away from people who loved him, made friends with people who came to love him, and walked away from all of that to find his answers "in the wild" on his own. The way away from love and relationship leads not to life, but indeed to death. And death is what Chris got.
The book quotes Chris' mother as saying, "I haven't prayed since we lost him." (pg. 202) An older man who befriended Chris, Ronald Franz, also says, "When Alex left for Alaska, I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what had happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex." (pg. 60) But God didn't do anything to Chris, except let him do as he wanted? If Chris sought real answers to his hard questions, God is there, and God can help, but you have to know you need help and submit to someone wiser than you. Chris McCandless never submitted willingly to anyone, and he certainly never admitted anyone else had teaching or wisdom for him. He was smarter than everyone else, better able to see the truth than anyone else. So the heritage Chris McCandless left is one that drives his mother to stop praying, and converts an old man to atheism. Is this the heritage anyone would want?
So read this book, but read it with questions in mind. Why are we lauding a young man as a hero who was actually a foolish man? What kind of society are we in where real courage and real heroism are somehow playing 2nd fiddle to selfishness and arrogance? When are you so intellectually intelligent that you become stupid? Is there any time when foolish decisions could be called "courageous"? In a search for truth and what really matters in life, is it acceptable to think nothing of hurting those people who are most vulnerable to you? When you die, will the way you lived your life cause others to abandon their faith or grow in their faith? Is it ever courageous to be selfish and think only of yourself? Is it harder to walk away from a relationship, or to stay in a relationship and work on making it better? Would you ever teach anyone else that the way to have real relationships is to limit yourself only to those people who cannot ever hurt you?
Real courage, real heroism comes when you love others and you serve others. Real courage has nothing selfish in it. Fathers and husbands who remain with their families and provide for them, even though they would rather have a mid-life crisis and leave it all, they are courageous and heroic. They remain, they work, they don't father or husband perfectly, but they remain in difficult relationships. It courageous to stay in the hard parts of life, and try. Mothers and wives who sacrifice and serve again and again and again without books being written about them, without thanks, but who continue to love and give of themselves to others. That is courageous. It is hard to stay in messy relationships. It is easy to leave. It is courageous to stay and do hard things. It is easy to leave and do what you want.
So, let's read this book, but read it as a cautionary tale. This is what happens when you seemingly 'have it all', but have not love. When you die, will people be driven to become atheists? Will people stop praying when you are dead? Or will you live a life of wisdom and love? Will you leave behind you a heritage of godly love and service? Will people pray more because of the example you left them? Will they be more loving, better mothers or fathers or sisters or brothers? Or will they become angry and arrogant and foolishness? Yes, this is a good book to read. But let's read it for the right reasons and with the right questions.
[NOTE: In the book, and in the movie, the author proposes that Chris ate some poison berries which caused his death. But tests have been made around the area, and plants that would have been available to Chris were tested, and no toxic berries or plants have been found. The truth is probably that he starved. Too few calories coming in, high expenditure of calories for hunting and keeping warm resulted eventually in such a calorie deficit that he died.]
Some good articles I found on Chris McCandless include:
http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/ap...
http://nmge.gmu.edu/textandcommunity/...
Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: “I am exposed continually to what I will call the ‘McCandless Phenomenon.’ People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent […:] When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he [had:] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament […:] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.”[18:] Some may argue that this is what he wanted all along, given his troubled past
****************
An update as of Sept 2013 as to how McCandless died. See http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs... which documents the poison contained in wild potato seeds. Consuming these seeds introduces a neurotoxin into the body which results in lathyrism. This condition causes gradual paralysis which ultimately made McCandless very weak, unable to stand or walk, and thus unable to forage or hunt for food.
996 reviews29.7k followers
"I now walk into the wild."
- Christopher McCandless (1968-1992)
I live a life, I suspect, that is much like yours. Wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed. At the end of this weekly desert, there might be a drink or ten to celebrate the victory over another five days of soul-crushing drudgery.
I am a desk jockey. A paper pusher. I mean that literally; I sit in my office, and when people peer inside, they will see me moving a sheet of paper from one side to the other. It looks, to the untrained eye, like valuable labor.
When I get the chance, though, I head to the mountains, to the wild. I love the away-ness of these trips. At the risk of sounding absurdly curmudgeonly, I like getting away from the crush of humanity (and I'm sure the crush of humanity appreciates my temporary absence).
There was at time when my friends and I would head out west every summer. We picked a destination (isolated, challenging), packed the car, and plunged into the wilderness. We undertook silly risks, because we were younger and we laughed at consequences, or at the possibility that there were consequences. Once, a little later on, we gathered around a campfire, four of us, and swore - like characters from a young adult novel - that we'd always do this: that we'd always head out to the mountains together.
Then we got older. My friends married, they started having kids, and the mountains became a memory, a slideshow of pictures that showed up on the screen savers of our computers. Friends with whom I'd jumped off cliffs, slid down glaciers, and climbed rocks matured overnight into sober professionals, husbands, and fathers. It was remarkable how age engendered caution, and squelched the desire for adventure.
That was my mindset when I picked up Into the Wild.
Jon Krakauer's classic is, to put it mildly, a polarizing book. Based on the people I've surveyed, I've found that you either love it or you hate it, and whether you love it or hate it will be determined by what you think about Christopher McCandless, the young man at the center of Into the Wild. You will be taken in by Chris's literate, philosophical, iconoclastic, boundary-pushing vagabondism. Or you will be sickened by his selfishness, his self-pity, and the way he left a shattered family in his wake.
Either way, you will have a vivid response.
Upon graduating from Emory University, and instead of going on to law school (which was my choice), McCandless gave away $25,000 to charity and began his life as a tramp (or hobo, as they sometimes like to be called). I was in sixth grade when McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never returned. He was 24.
The power of Into the Wild is directly attributable to Krakauer's empathy for his subject. Krakauer is a solid adventure writer, but he's not a prose stylist. Rather, he uses his own life experiences to connect with Chris on a very intimate, personal level. He does not attempt any faux objectivity that is often the hallmark of "serious" serious journalism. Instead, Krakauer admits, straight up, that he saw his younger self in Chris, with the exception that Krakauer survived his youth, while Chris did not. For instance, there is an autobiographical section in Into the Wild where Krakauer tells his story about climbing the Devil's Thumb. This could easily have been a self-serving digression, but Krakauer uses that experience, and the vividness of his memory, to explore the the compulsions that drove Chris McCandless to follow his unique path to his destiny.
I think Chris, in his own way, was a towering figure; he was the person I would like to be, if I had more guts and less excuses. He was a smart kid, a college grad, who came from money. His parents were messed up, but really, whose parents aren't? After college, instead of going to law school (don't go to law school, by the way), he gave away $25,000, burned his credit cards, and set out to see the west.
Whatever else you call him, you can't call him a poser. Like everyone, he had his share of dreams and demons, and he set out to follow his dreams and fight his demons. There's something to be said for what he put his parent through. Still, the world forces us to be our own person. He went forward the best way he knew how, defining himself along the way. The tragedy, of course, is that the lessons he learned - about the value of friends and family - he learned too late.
I don't really need to defend Chris. Krakauer does that. He is unabashedly in his corner, defending his choices, his skills, his desire to go alone to the far places, like John Muir before him. Chris McCandless was himself, fully and completely, which is saying a lot, in this day and age. Or any day and age. He was part adventurer, part philosopher, and part monk (the monk part fascinates Krakauer, who spends a lot of time wondering whether Chris died a virgin).
I suppose a brief note on the movie, directed by Sean Penn, is in order. While I found it poetic and inspiring, the movie focuses too much on Chris's effect on the various people he meets on his journeys. In a way, Chris becomes some kind of wandering apostle, healing and helping those he meets along his path, before he dies a martyr's death in Alaska, a vision from a Don Maclean song ("the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you..."). The book, on the other hand, keeps Chris firmly grounded as a human being. Krakauer admires Chris, to be sure, but he does not neglect the warts. (However, Krakauer sharply dismisses those armchair psychiatrists who want to diagnose Chris with a mental disorder. I'm glad he does. I think it's saying soemething about the conformity of our society that anyone who bucks the trend (he gave up law school!?) is called mad).
In the end, Chris was one of those rare people who wanted to know the world intimately, and in the process of discovering those secrets, was killed by that same world. Maybe there was something quixotic or foolish in his quest; maybe he should have taken a job, taken a wife, found a safe desk behind which to grow old. Or maybe there is something foolish in us, to believe that we can outlive the world with our caution.
non-fiction outdoors travel-adventure
2,595 reviews45.4k followers
okay. lets address the elephant on goodreads, which is the common theme of essentially bashing chris mccandless in reviews. i have seen so many ranting about how irresponsible and selfish and arrogant and unprepared he was. and i mean, theyre not wrong, but that honestly has nothing to do with the book?
what i love most about this is how objective krakauer is. he neither praises nor critiques mccandless, but presents the facts regarding an unfortunate event in a very interesting and fascinating way. which leads me to believe that many people did not understand the nature of this book.
yes, mccandless thought so highly of himself that he literally went out into the alaskan wilderness, equipped with only a plant guide, and felt confident that he could survive. yes, he ignored the number one rule of boys scouts - to be prepared. yes, he only thought about how his actions affected himself. but man, the manner in which krakauer tells chris' story is so gripping that i couldnt help but get invested in everything that happened. this book reads like a true crime story, but where the only crime committed was a serious lack of judgement by a very misguided individual.
so it seems massively unfair to penalise the book itself because of disagreeing with what a young man did. but hey, to each their own.
↠ 4 stars
325 reviews36 followers
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this book. The genesis of the book was an in-depth magazine article, and I suspect that the article was superb. But I just don't think there's enough here to warrant an entire book. As evidence, I point to several lengthy chapters that have nothing to do with the underlying story--they discuss other people who have gone "into the wild" and, surprisingly, Krakauer includes a whole chapter about himself.
My other problem is that I found myself unable to identify or empathize with the central character here. I think that Chris McCandless was not much more than a privileged, entitled, selfish, and undeniably intelligent person who threw everything away and nearly destroyed his family for reasons that weren't any clearer by the end of the book than they were at the beginning. I worried far more about his parents and his sister, who he called his "best friend," than I did about him.
I ended up "finishing" the book by skimming the last 1/3, or maybe even the last 1/2. I almost gave this only 1 star but decided to go with 2 because I want to give Krakauer the benefit of the doubt--it's a well-written book, I just don't think it needed to be written at all.
2,676 reviews3,004 followers
In 1992, roughly around the same time Chris McCandless was living out his final days in the Alaskan wilderness, I would have been enjoying the summer holidays before embarking on my final year at school, contemplating the big wide world and what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It wasn't until watching Sean Penn's film in 2008 I would learn of Chris's story, a story that moved me, immensely.
I always presumed Jon Krakauer's book would be some huge epic, but was surprised on finding out it's a little over 200 pages. I simply had to read it, just don't know why it took me so long.
It's going to be difficult to review this without making my own thoughts on Chris known first. Although it isn't as straightforward as this, taking everything into consideration, if there is to be a camp criticism and a camp McCandless, then I firmly sit with McCandless. He was an awe-inspiring bright young man, who simply broke free from the establishment to follow his own path, a path, going by both book and film that was simply stunning. I know there are people that criticized his adventure as reckless, stupid, dangerous and well unequipped for the treacherous landscape of wild Alaska, and were even angry with him, that he deserved what was coming to him, disrespecting nature. Let's not forget something, he probably died a slow agonizing death that you wouldn't wish on anybody, why the anger from people who didn't even know him? it was nobody else's business what Chris chose to undertake. As the old saying goes, it's a free country. And he was just that, free.
I do feel for his family of course, I can't begin to imagine the pain and anguish they would have had to injure, and the fact he didn't try to contact his sister Karine, who he was dearly close to, was strange. I just hope his family came to eventually realize that the two years Chris spent on the road he would have been immensely happy. That's got to count for something. Had he gone on to work, no doubt well paid work, you get the impression he just wouldn't want to be there. Had Chris been some wacko or mentally incapacitated person I would have taken far more pity over his story, but he wasn't, he was highly intelligent and knew exactly what he was doing. That's why, although he came to a sad end, I am still on the whole, happy for the guy.
The strongest parts of the book for me are actually not the last months in Alaska (which had to be recreated based on Chris’ diary and the evidence found at the site of his death), but the memories of people whom Chris had met on his travels, with whom he had caught rides, worked and stayed, struck up friendships. I was especially moved by the generosity of strangers and by Chris’s run in with 81 year old Ron Franz, whom he managed to convince to give up the monotonous life and take up adventure. These two years of traveling had no boundaries, no obligations, no limitations, no expectations. Just exploring the land, exploring life, and himself.
Jon Krakauer also included memories from his own youth, trying to draw comparisons with Chris, along with some other historical journey's similar to what McCandless embarked on.
Chris was a keen reader, and used literature as a way to inspire him on the road, there were quotes from the likes of Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, Henry David Thoreau and Wallace Stegner that he noted down in his diary, these play an important role for any outsider trying to understand just who Chris was.
The book works wonders on different levels, it deals with non fiction in a dramatic storytelling way, like an adventure novel, but also stays as close as possible to the facts and truths recovered from Chris's diary. I didn't think his epic story could be condensed down to 200 pages, but it works, only concentrating on the things that truly matter. I was moved to the core. Not many books have had the opportunity to do this to me.
One shouldn’t judge a life by its end or its duration, but by its content. Chris may have died young, but his life certainly was a fulfilling one.
america-canada biography non-fiction
2,191 reviews1,039 followers
Chris McCandless didn't want to prove anything to anyone; he just wanted to be free and live as he saw fit. So far, from the image of the bohemian and thoughtless teenager, Jon Krakauer portrays him to us as an intelligent and obstinate young man with remarkable capacities to unite around him. He leaves those who have met him during his travels this feeling of great sociability, which contrasts significantly with the need for solitude that he regularly showed, a little the desire to owe nothing to anyone and find the solutions to his problems.
When he leaves his family at a young age after high school, he goes from odd jobs to odd jobs, squats where the wind carries him, and fate brings him down. He must have had a lucky star because his meetings always seem benevolent, and this is perhaps one of the elements that will encourage him to push his adventures even further. His thirst for self-sufficiency will guide him to Alaska in a desert, where he will spend several months with the fatal outcome we know.
The author breaks stereotypes and does a real investigation work by understanding this young man's personality, who wishes to break with modern life. Far from judgment and bias, he analyzes the situation by comparing it to other life paths similar to Chris McCandless's. It also seems that his death is still a little enigmatic because many news sites on the subject are always looking for genuine reasons.
That's a genuine interest in this book, which brings us back tirelessly to the harsh reality of life outside civilization.
adventure american-literature biography
1,589 reviews163k followers
The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure.
Christopher Johnson McCandless began roaming in 1991 after graduating college.
He gave away his savings ($25,000) to charity, got rid of all his material possessions, burned his remaining money and just left.
Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
He didn't tell anyone where he was going, what he was doing - just up and left, leaving a stunned sister and confused family behind.
Like his favorite heroes, he set off for an adventure. Eventually he left behind his car in the Mojave Desert and lived under an assumed name, Alexander Supertramp.
It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.
He kept his journals with him, he worked when hungry and slowly, but surely, made his way to the Alaskan wilderness.
Along the way he met many a wonderful person - of which he touched their lives and even months later, they remembered and knew of him.
“Happiness [is] only real when shared”
But, what's shocking most of all is how he was found.
Alone. Emaciated. Dead.
His story has captured the hearts and minds of millions, he is gone but he will be remembered.
When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines upon you.
Whew.
There's a lot to unpack here.
I have never read this book, I have never seen the movie but I know his story.
I remember my mom telling me parts when I was a child, my teachers filling me in during history lessons and even friends talk about this unforgettable book.
So, when it became available at the library, I had to check it out.
And wow.
I really didn't know what to expect (and this certainly wasn't what I thought I was going to read) and yet, it was perfect.
This was told through a third party - someone who read about McCandless's story back when it was a minor blurb in a newspaper and was curious where it began.
So, the author picked up the thread and followed it - eventually reconstructing the year before McCandless's death and the reason behind him leaving everything behind.
This book was so well-written.
It completely encapsulated this young man's life and death. This is one of those books that once you finish it, you are spoiled for everything else for a long, long time.
Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads
10 reviews21 followers
I love Jon Krakauer. I didn't find one single thing about the Alex McCandless even remotely interesting. He came across as a spoiled brat with no concept of reality - basically because of his priveleged upbringing. But somehow, he blamed his parents for that void of myopic self absorption.
I live in Alaska and I've lived in Idaho and Colorado and Oregon . . . basically AROUND people who love the great outdoors. I am more comfortable in a heated coffee shop READING about the great outdoors. Still, I know that heading into any forest - particularly one at that latitude and altitude in pursuit of adventure with (a) no food, (b) no gear, (c) no plan and (d) no backup plan is nothing short of delusional or maybe just stupid.
I absolutely adore Jon Krakauer's attempts to explain Alex's possible motives and angst. I get that Krakauer identifies with some of what gnawed at Alex . . . that discontent . . . that feeling that life can't possibly be this pointless . . . etc. I wonder about those things with fairly consistent frequency. I suppose I have my own means of stamping those feelings out (alternating burst of extreme carbohydrate consumption and running or spinning; work and volunteerism). Still, the fact that Alex died of exposure in an abandoned bus in Denali National Park is less poignant than poetic - justice, that is. Darwinism, if you want to be cruel.
(Cringe) That sounded really awful, didn't it? But Krakauer carefully paints a picture of a young man completely disillusioned with the life that his parents provided for him, the future they groomed him for. A life easier, better than theirs. He points to his parents' mistakes and flaws as lightening rods for Alex's rejection of them and his pursuit of deeper understanding.
What a luxury. One that we all pursue at some point in our lives and if we have any sense, grow out of. I was constantly irritated with Alex for hitching, homelessness, biting every hand that tried to feed him. His lonely, desperate death not at all surprising and not terribly sad, either . . . except for what it put his family through.
I had no interest in seeing the movie. I saw trailer images of a young man looking off into the wildnerness with depth and intensity and that is NOT the Alex McCandless I got to know in the book. If Sean Penn managed to paint a more enlightened image of Alex, then he deviated from the book quite a bit.
9,563 reviews474 followers
March 25, 2022
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild is a 1996 non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. The book was adapted to film in 2007, directed by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless (Christopher Johnson McCandless 1968 - 1992, a young, and wise man left his family and friends and headed off into the wilderness).
Into the Wild addresses the issues of how to be accepted into society, and how finding oneself sometimes conflicts with being an active member in society. Most critics agree that Chris McCandless left to find some sort of enlightenment. He also tries to find his way in the wild with minimal material possessions, because "it made the journey more enjoyable."
His extreme risk-taking was the hubris which eventually led to his downfall. Chris McCandless was influenced by transcendentalism and the need to "revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience."
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و پنجم ماه نوامبر سال2012میلادی
عنوان: به سوی سرزمین سفید؛ نویسنده: جان کراکائور؛ مترجم: یحیی خویی؛ تهران، قطره، سال1391، در320 ص؛ شابک9786001195877؛ موضوع: سرگذشتنامه کریستوفر جانسون مکندلیس - ماجراجویان - ایالات متحده - رهنوردان آلاسکا - از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
بسوی طبیعت وحشی (به سوی سرزمین سفید)، کتابی ناداستان، و بنوشته ای از «جان کراکائر (کراکائور)» است، که نخستین بار در سال1996میلادی، منتشر شده است؛ این کتاب، بر اساس نگاره ی9000کلمه ای نویسنده، درباره ی زندگی «کریستوفر مک کندلس»، و با عنوان «مرگ یک بیگناه»، که در شماره ی ماه ژانویه ی مجله ی «آوتساید»، چاپ شده بود، به نگارش درآمده است؛ در سال2007میلادی نیز، اقتباسی سینمایی از آن، به کارگردانی «شان پن»، و با بازی «امیل هرش»، با عنوان «بسوی طبیعت وحشی» ساخته شد
تاریخبهنگام رسانی 10/03/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
2,456 reviews35.1k followers
We are all heroes to ourselves. McCandless was, Krakauer is. This doesn't vary. All that varies is how we define heroism and how much, or how little, we are prepared to do to for that stance.
In order to get people, usually young men, to sacrifice their lives we tell them of those that went before and tell them they were heroes who died for their countries, died for their principles, died even for their dreams. Impractical dreams that are the province of the young. And those who would be heroes never concern themselves with the practical, that is far too mundane, it is for others to take care of those details.
McCandless' dream of heroism was to survive entirely alone and entirely off the land at the ends of the earth. It didn't include the practicality of learning about the wild foods he might forage in that area, or how he might survive in extreme weather conditions, or even exactly where his place of solitude was situated so that when he sought succour at the end, he didn't even know how close it really was.
The final photograph he took of himself is of a wasted face, gaunt but beautiful with the shining eyes of one who has lived his dream and is satisfied. Then he died.
412 reviews12 followers
This book got me riveted in the tragic story of Chris McCandless, a young man who left his family and friends, abandoned most of his material possessions, went to the Alaska wilderness and perished there. The author does a great job of portraying McCandless complex personality through meticulous research based on interviews, letters and journal entries. The writing is so engaging that although it is already clear from the beginning how McCandless' story would end, I was hooked till the last page. Krakauer only digresses when discussing his own high-risk undertaking and those of ill-fated adventurers similar to McCandless — these parts offer comparison to McCandless' character but I found myself getting impatient and wanting them to end quickly, to return to the main story itself which is much more compelling.
Readers have been divided with regard to this story. Some admire McCandless' daring and idealism; some others say he was stupid, reckless and arrogant enough to have gone to Alaska without sufficient preparation. I think he was a human being with faults and merits, but I have to admit I felt something stirring in me when I read this passage, taken from a letter he wrote to a friend:
"...make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation... The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure."
The passage resonates with me because my life has been filled with stagnation and inactivity. I am the queen of conventionalism. I don't consider myself unhappy, but I'm always afraid of moving outside the comfort zone, of expanding further than my own comfortable little shell. I often don't exert myself to my best capabilities because halfhearted efforts seemed good enough. When I read about McCandless, I noticed that one of his admirable traits is if he wanted something he went out and did it. He was not afraid of challenges, the greater they are the better. Jason Mraz says "live high, live mighty, live righteously". I think that was what McCandless did: he lived up to his ideals.
One the other hand, the greatest tragedy of McCandless' life, in my opinion, was his conflicting feelings toward human intimacy and relationship. He clashed with his parents and others who didn't share his beliefs to the point that he spurned humanity and sought nature and the wilderness instead. But even during his solitary journeys he met a lot of people and connected with them, touching their lives as well as his own. His final odyssey in Alaska had probably made him realize, more than ever, the raw need for companionship, but he didn't survive that trip — causing endless grief to his family. So in the end, if there is something I can take from McCandless story, it is this message: Be bold. Get out there. Do something. But don't forget those who love you.
2,307 reviews20 followers
This book seems to divide people. One group seems to think McCandless was a visionary; a free-thinking, wild spirit who lived his dream and died an unfortunate, tragic death. The other group thinks he was a stupid kid; an ill-prepared daydreamer who brought his demise upon himself due to his own idiocy.
I think it's entirely possible he was both. In my experience, the two states are not mutually exclusive. The one thing that's clearly true is that his death was avoidable and tragic. Whichever camp you fall into, this is an upsetting tale.
What also upsets me is that, due to the media picking up on this case, with various newspaper and magazine articles being written about it, a movie being made and (the surefire win for anyone looking to be a teenage martyr) a soundtrack album being recorded by hipster messiah Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, McCandless is being promoted as an inspirational figure for impressionable young people.
I can only hope that they will take this sad tale onboard as a cautionary tale, rather than one to emulate.
1,221 reviews9,794 followers
Not marking my spoilers as I believe most people know the basic story. If you don't, proceed with caution!
I liked this book okay - it is probably my least favorite Krakauer book, but I think that was because my feelings about it were tainted by the main character. McCandless was soooooo frustrating. He went about the free spirit/return to the wild thing all wrong. He refused help and destroyed his resources with the belief that that was what was required to survive on your own. No! Be prepared! Learn basic skills! Accept free help! All of those things would have still allowed him to be a vagabond and he might still be alive today.
Also frustrating is the fact that I hear some people idolizing McCandless. They want to be like him, they think he approached getting away from it all in a wise fashion, they martyr him (maybe not realizing that it was his own ineptitude that caused his death??).
Please read this as a cautionary tale, not as a guidebook for escaping life and responsibilities. If you do, I am sorry to say, you may meet the same fate.
912 reviews928 followers
84th book of 2020.
S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS MCCANDLESS. AUGUST?
I’m unsure how to start this review; for the first time in a while, I’m finding it difficult to access my thoughts on this. I’ve got so much to say, but even after waiting a whole day, my thoughts are all scrambled in the wind. I’ll start with this. At 2am the other night I tapped the touch-lamp on my bedside table and opened my copy of Into the Wild – in pencil, I scrawled, “Literature Failed the Heroes in this Book.” It is pictured below. I then turned out my light, rolled over, and went to sleep.
I was born in 1997 – five years after Chris McCandless died. The note I used to start the review was found on the bus his body was in. He weighed about four stone. Jon Krakauer wrote an article about the 24 year old boy who died in Alaska, but his obsession held him longer, long enough to write this beautiful, horrible book. I am glad that he did. This book transcends being about McCandless.
One does not look have to look far to find people laughing at McCandless, calling him an idiot, or worst of all – “He deserved to die.” Ironically, comments like these, which have been wrenching my heart, came out my own brother’s mouth. Though my brother is one to speak rashly, and flippantly about things, he said to me over the dinner table, after I explained the book rather briefly, that it sounded like McCandless was an “idiot”. We are very unalike. My brother sees the world in black and white. He believes something or he doesn’t, there are no grey areas in his life. It was at the dinner table this happened, and when I opened my mouth, clearly some sort of fury or defiance in my eyes, my mother gave me the don’t eyes, the drop-it eyes. Chances are my brother said it only to get a rise out of me, though I think he partly believed what he was saying. McCandless, as far as he was aware, as far as many people are aware, went into Alaska with almost no equipment, no food, and little idea on what he was going to do. He survived 114 days.
Literature is Dangerous
I’ve been unpacking my little late-night scrawl. I awoke in the morning thinking, “Why the hell did I write that? What does that even mean?” I put it down to trying to be clever, 2am delusions. But, I’ve thought about it, and I now stand by my past, tired self. I do not mean that literature is to blame for McCandless’ death, or any of the other people in the book that Krakauer tells us about. What I mean to say, I think, is that they were failed by literature. Literature is dangerous. Book burnings show how intimidating books can be. Rushdie’s six-million pound bounty for writing The Satanic Verses is a modern day testament to the power of books, and the consequences of writing. It’s interesting to think that just about anyone, the most malleable of teenagers, can read books by mad philosophers, to take fiction literally. McCandless loved Jack London, Tolstoy, Thoreau. Krakauer takes us on a jaunt in his own life, when, a year younger than McCandless was in Alaska, he nearly lost his life climbing the Devils Thumb. He admitted to be on a high from reading too much Nietzsche and Kerouac – as if these were factors of his journey. They were. They were for McCandless too. Each chapter of this book starts with a quote, many of which are highlighted quotes from the paperbacks found with McCandless’ body, and many of them mirror the existence the young man was striving for. So, in way, literature inspired McCandless, Krakauer too, into searching for more meaning in life, for something bigger than themselves. To quote Kerouac, “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” If that doesn’t make your heart swell with possibility, with ideas of escape, or living in fresh air and leaving behind this mundane 21st century life, then I don’t know what will. And if doesn’t, maybe that’s proof that terrifyingly, if I were less safe and secure in my home, if I lived in America, I could have been a McCandless, or a Krakauer, depending how lucky I was.
I’ve read a lot of Kerouac. I’m getting interested in spirituality, Buddhism, the soul, the nature world. Things that seem to steer me towards the life that the men in this book began striving for. Krakauer is impartial, though you can sense some to some degree a biased opinion, he is mostly removed from the book, leaving it entirely up to the reader to decide for themselves. He includes some of the comments he had, the negative, attacking ones. There are also arguments on my side of the fence: It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behaviour is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure. That, in large part, is why so many teenagers drive too fast and drink too much and take too many drugs, why it has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war: It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionary adaptive, a behaviour merely encoded in our genes. McCandless knew the risks, and Krakauer allows that he was arrogant too, he was unprepared, yes. His failings do not, cannot, outlive what McCandless was trying to do. A 24 year old man does not die to be remembered for his failings. At least, his words will be remembered.
It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you.
Heroes in this Book
This book moved me so much is because of the parallels I have found, possibly projected, in McCandless. I am currently 23, just a year younger than he was. I have a love of literature, some say “obsessive” love, for literature. I am into the outdoors, I have been to many countries, I was in the scouts for most of my childhood, I adore camping and walking… I love the things that McCandless loves. And above all, I can imagine, as I have suggested, if I was less invested in my life here, I can picture myself doing something similar. Maybe not Alaska, and maybe not without supplies, or a map, but certainly walking out with grand (maybe naïve) ideas of transcendence found in the wilderness. Krakauer makes an important distinction: McCandless didn’t want to die, that much is clear from the S.O.S note. In the end, he must have known he was dying, which does pain me a little to admit that he was in that bus, dying, and he knew it. I won’t reveal all the heart-breaking notebook entries, but there are some which show that despite his situation, McCandless was happy. He had escaped civilisation; he was living a truer life than his hero, Jack London, even more than Tolstoy. They were hypocrites where McCandless wasn’t. He lived the life he wanted to live, he lived the life he chose to live. I couldn’t count the amount of people I know that I believe live lives of unfulfilled yearning. It is the most common thing in today’s society – with social media we constantly see lives that we think would be better, lives that we imagine for ourselves. Oh, to be more attractive. Oh, to be more famous. Oh, to be richer. We strive for lives that we can’t achieve, or else lives that we can’t be bothered to try and achieve. McCandless died with complete fulfilment in the life he wanted. He carved through the bullshit of life and reached the epicentre of his yearnings. His yearning was the death of him. But I dare say that he died having fulfilled himself, more than most of the people I know in my own life. Possibly, more than I will ever be able to fulfil my own life.
That is why I call the people in this book “Heroes.” The photo in this review is one of McCandless' final acts - one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell. Krakauer goes on to say this, of the photograph: But if he pitied himself in those last difficult hours- because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will had let him down- it's not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God. Or as McCandless once wrote of himself in the third person, But his spirit is soaring.
20th-century lit-american ml-reads
Author 1 book133 followers
I don't know why everyone went so wild over this book or this kid - is there one without the other? It seems like people only cared because it was a Jon Krakauer book that translated well to Hollywood. The guy in the book didn't even have enough material about himself to make a whole book and every other chapter is about some other person who did a similar "disappearance into nature." Dying because you don't know how to take care of yourself in the wild is no reason for society to glorify your life.
195 reviews100 followers
প্রকৃতির খুব কাছাকাছি থাকলে কেমন ফিল হতো তা বই পড়েই পেয়ে গেছি।
বই পড়ার পর মুভিটিও দেখে ফেলেছি চমৎকার একটি মুভি আপনারা যারা দেখেননি দেখে ফেলতে পারেন।
বই পড়লে বেশি ফিল পাবেন তবে মুভিটাও অনেক ভালো করেছে।
Author 7 books1,352 followers
On the outside looking in, this seems like another case of arrogant human vs unassuming nature. Nature usually wins that fight. It did here and in a most tragic way. And yet, in Into the Wild Jon Krakauer does an excellent job of muddying up the waters, so that they flow with the natural fluidity of life itself. Was this kid so very unprepared? Was this a foolhardy and unnecessary death easily avoided with a few, slight precautions? Life is seldom black and white, cut and dry. Krakauer reminds us of that, while telling a riveting story.
988 reviews1,997 followers
The article written by J. Krakauer was totally enlarged to make this, an obsessive journalistic account of an obsession. I am sure that the core of it is included in this 200 pg book somewhere (the anecdote: young incompetent kid dies out in the wilderness); it should be short and sweet, however it is exhaustively stretched out (obviously to capitalize on the popular story) to include stories of the own writer himself as a kid (conceited!) plus brief accounts by people who met the young mentally ill man. Also, there's a long (but interesting) section which includes tales of other intrepid nonconformist isolationists. Why couldn't this kid just learn his lesson on moderation? Had this dude been into heroin instead, the results would have been strikingly similar (minus, of course, the book).
915 reviews
Into the Wild was an interesting read, but I have been having trouble in putting a rating on it. I had heard vague aspects about Christopher McCandless in the past, and until now, I'd never actually read anything about his life, and his tragic end.
This book was extremely well written. It is thorough in regards to investigating as to why and how McCandless died, and even the events leading up to his death. I enjoyed the author's writing style, and if I'm honest, I was totally pulled in to this story.
We meet a handful of witnesses who knew McCandless on a personal level, and they make a valued contribution to his story. I really enjoyed this read, but I disagree that McCandless is indeed being hailed a hero for the time he spent in the wild. Yes, it is definitely horrendous the way in which he died, but, in my personal opinion, he came across as a selfish and conceited character, who held no care for the people that loved him, therefore, breaking his families hearts. His death could have been entirely avoided had he not been so hubristic and pompous. Also, I think that creating a film out of this was completely the wrong thing to do. What kind of message are we sending out to kids that are easily influenced? This story should be used as a stark warning, not a celebration. I'm glad I read this, and I liked Krakauer's style, despite not agreeing with the way this story was publicised.
299 reviews1,014 followers
Another well-written book by Jon Krakauer, this was a fascinating, and often sad, glimpse into the spiral down of an idealistic young man, Christopher McCandless. Even when his decision-making didn't make sense, the reader still somehow identifies with the internal struggle this young man was going through, and his journey becomes theirs to take with him. It seems terrible to say I enjoyed this book, but I really did. If nothing else, it allowed me to identify with someone else's struggles, while seeing from a safe distance the fallacy in their thinking.
★★★★ ½
adventure biography mental-health
Author 147 books704 followers
🏔️🌲 A young man hikes into the Alaskan wilderness to see if he can survive and live off the land. But his story soon becomes a tragedy. (Nonfiction.) It’s gut wrenching really.
[The author also wrote a book about an infamous climbing disaster that occurred on Everest entitled Into Thin Air.]
551 reviews812 followers
3ish stars.
The movie adaptation is one of my all-time faves. Of course, while this book is an unnecessarily expanded version of what was originally an article written by Krakauer, the movie turns it into an epic, dramatized, stranger-than-fiction, based-on-a -true-story biopic of Christopher McCandless.
McCandless in the book is still an enigmatic, magnetic, fascinating man, but would I have felt the same if I hadn't already loved Emile Hirsch's portrayal of him? Would I have been affected as much by the touching, powerful relationships he shared with Jan Burres, and Ron Franz if I hadn't been picturing the incredible cinematic performances of Catherine Keener and Hal Holbrook in my mind?
McCandless's story is awe-inspiring regardless, but Krakauer stretches it far past the breaking point by including narratives of other, similarly ill-fated explorers (including his own experiences), among other frivolous details that I honestly could have done without.
One of the uncommon instances where the movie surpasses the book, but I'm not disappointed I read it. Makes me want to get out and go hiking or backpacking; my wife and I have a goal to visit each of the 59 U.S. National Parks (we've been to 10/59 so far, a long way to go). Or if nothing else, to watch the movie again. :)
Posted in Mr. Philip's Library
author-man biography-autobiography movie-is-better
666 reviews1,180 followers
Krakauer makes the basic facts of Christopher McCandless's trek into the Alaskan wilderness and his death nearly 4 months later clear from the outset. Even though I'd heard a lot about this case, that's just the beginning of the story. His motivations, especially since graduating college a year earlier, are what make this story interesting. As some of McCandless's ideas about living a new kind of life off the map come into focus, Krakauer continues to highlight the harsh realities McCandless chose to face. While what McCandless was trying to do might be appealing to some, Krakauer reminds readers that McCandless was ill-prepared for the dangers. Ultimately, of course, the new life he had fashioned was cut short by tragedy. 3.75 stars
277 reviews885 followers
I think a lot of the people who have formed negative opinions of this story are really missing the point. Most people rage on and on about what a terribly selfish, careless idiot Chris McCandless was, to which I say, duh. John Krakauer points out many, many times that Chris was "heedless" and "overconfident." I never once felt that Krakauer idolized him or tried to make him into a hero. He was fascinated by McCandless, sure, and he certainly seems to have seen a lot of himself in the young man, but by no means does he gush about what a fantastic person or brave adventurer McCandless was.
Chris McCandless is fascinating to me because, despite how frustratingly foolhardy and arrogant he may come across (who's to say really - none of us ever knew him), I am astounded by the number of people who fell head over heels for him in such a short period of time. Grown men and women! It seems impossible that his flaws outweighed his character. The people he met over the course of his travels genuinely seemed to love him, but Chris was just one of those strange individuals who don't really want to be loved.
I do hope his parents and sister were able to find peace with McCandless's death. It's very hard to keep giving away your love to someone who simply doesn't want it.
1,396 reviews1,541 followers
"Not all those who wander are lost" seems to be the focus of this non-fiction biography by Krakauer about a young man named Chris McCandless who went into the Alaskan wilderness, but never came out again. Krakauer examines McCandless' history, friendships, and probable motivations while also comparing his case to other young men who died or disappeared in the wilderness. He also gets very personal and recounts a solo mountain climbing adventure of his own that nearly went south, but didn't- crediting his survival to luck rather than skill. Into the Wild paints McCandless as a man with a brilliant mind and the soul of an artist, who didn't fit in to the modern world's or his family's view of how he was supposed to be.
"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later his decomposed body was found by a party of moose hunters." pg 10, ebook. For much of the book, Krakauer tries to figure out what ultimately ended McCandless's life. In the edition I read, he had a new afterword that he penned in April 2015, talking about his definitive theory for why McCandless died. If you haven't read the book since it was published, I really recommend picking up a new edition if only to read that.
Krakauer includes actual journal entries from McCandless's wanderings, which I thought gave us a pretty clear window into the man's mind: "It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you." pg 37, ebook. We saw a man who cared about life, about the way he was living, and about the way he interacted with others.
It is curious to me that his relationship with his parents wasn't better, but I'll let Krakauer tell you all about it: "McCandless's personality was puzzling in its complexity. He was intensely private but could be convivial and gregarious in the extreme. And despite his overdeveloped social conscience, he was no tight-lipped, perpetually grim do-gooder who frowned on fun. To the contrary, he enjoyed tipping a glass now and then and was an incorrigible ham." pg 95
As interesting as McCandless's story is, my favorite part of this book was Krakauer's experience solo climbing the Devil's Thumb in Alaska. "By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence- the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes- all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand." pg 115, ebook. That passage made me wonder- what sorts of things do I like to do in my life as much as Krakauer loves climbing? It seems to me, that the state of flow he's describing there, would be a place that I would like to dwell in as much as possible.
Recommended for folks who like to read about people with unconventional life styles or if you're looking for a book about the human spirit. Into the Wild is a book about why people wander, what they may find, and, sadly, the loved ones they leave behind. Some further reading: Naked and Marooned: One Man. One Island., Man's Search for Meaning, or A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment.
120 reviews126 followers
I first read Into the Wild ten years ago when it first came out after finding out that parts of it are set in Carthage, Miner County, South Dakota pop. 187, a town where my mother has family and where her cousin was once mayor. My great-grandmother is buried in Howard, the Miner county seat. So that was the book and movie’s initial appeal. I mean this town is the true “blink-and-you-miss-it” town. That is, if one would ever even happen to drive through it as it isn’t on a main road. So I wondered, how young Chris McCandless, the subject of the book and movie ended up in Carthage in the first place.
Then I read that Sean Penn was finally making a movie adapted from the book and filming in Carthage. I thought it would be really interesting to see Carthage on the big screen. The first day it was showing in our little theater here in town I Shanghaied my husband (who really isn’t a movie goer, in fact if you ask him, on a scale of 1-10, that he’d suggest going to a movie as a form of entertainment he’d probably tell you –2) into going with me for the matinee. Now John had seen the Oprah show where Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch (who portrays young McCandless in the film) were guests along with author Jon Krakauer and didn’t think too much of McCandless so he was even less excited than usual about seeing this film. If he had known ahead of time that it was 140 minutes long he’d probably had left the theater after his first carton of Milk Duds. But the trooper he is, he persevered for my sake.
The movie adequately told the story of young Christopher McCandless who after graduating from Emory University, took off on a two year road trip, calling himself Alexander Supertramp. Very early on his car was destroyed and he abandoned it, burned what little money he had left and took off on foot. Some one say he was idealist others an adventurer, but others just reckless. Everyone seems to have his or her own opinion. What is clear is that he was found two year later dead in an abandoned bus just north of Denali National Park in Alaska. However his adventures along the way and the people he met tell a very interesting story. And the just how he died is still fodder for speculation although Krakauer does give his theory. Hirsch as McCandless is wonderful – his portrayal deserves an Oscar nomination as does that of Hal Holbrook as Ron Franz, the elderly recluse who befriends him. Told mostly in flashbacks, the movie suffers from uneven editing. I was also disappointed in the cinematography—the Alaskan scenes could have been brilliant but they were just average. That said, the South Dakota prairie was breathtaking. And it was fun to see Carthage. I think the entire town was filmed.
After watching the movie, I was compelled to read the book again. At only 207 pages it’s a fairly quick read. It was even more meaningful after watching the movie. I read many passages out loud to my husband and told him I thought he might change his opinion of McCandless. He is now reading the book. I don’t have the absolutely negative opinion of young Chris as many people have. He was a bit reckless, that’s for sure. But no more than many young men. As Krakauer mentions late in the book, it’s that attribute of daring that contributes to many young men signing up for the military—particularly in times of war. Yes, he did some things wrong. But don’t we all. The only reason that we’re reading about him was that he made some little mistakes that ended up killing him. He was actually a smart kid and I found a lot in him to be admired. It was sad he had to die. Any loss of life is sad. And that is what bothers me the most. That a parent lost a child, that a sister lost a brother, that a world lost a promising young man. There are lessons to be learned here, of course, but was the price too great?
430 reviews33 followers
So this idiot disdains material comforts his parent's gave him. Wanders off aimlessly moochin off other people he meets along the way. When he runs out of people to give him food/shelter/help he dies. The end.
He's not an adventurer- adventurers study routes, calculate supplies, learn to be self sufficient. They call their worried families. This brat was selfish and irresponsible; a shiftless wanderer who thought it would be fun and easy. The generosity of human kind (ie hard working people with jobs) and the bounty of nature will sustain him. As if it’s all skipping through meadows, picking berries and waking up to sunshine. You know what else is natural? Ebola. Tsunamis. Grizzly bears.
It was a wasted self indulgent short life. He's no adventurer, he's a silly overconfident buffoon. He turns his back on everything material exactly because he had a privileged upbringing and never learned the value of sturdy shoes and warm coats and food to eat. He has no respect for what true poverty is, or what self reliance means, and he had to end up dead to learn it.
Yes, he followed his dream, like a 4 year old chasing a ball across the interstate. He got flattened by the bus that is nature.
Its REALLY annoying how far out of his way the author goes to insist on McCandless's greatness and intellect in the face of his glaring incompetence and lack of resourcefulness. An underachiever of mammoth proportion. Moral of the story? When 3 year olds loose their shit its a temper tantrum, and when 40+ y.o loose their shit its a mid life crisis- but if you do it in the middle- You're a tragic hero? NO.
137 reviews2,585 followers
This is a great book and I was totally enthralled. Krakauer’s writing is spectacular. It is such a personal story, made so not just by the author detailing his own experiences mountaineering, but also by incorporating McCandless’s family in the suffering and loss of their son. Yet somehow Krakauer keeps it all grounded, presenting a strategically balanced view of McCandless himself despite what I must imagine to be a profound desire either to glorify him in his admirable quest for self-reliance, or to vilify him for the reckless audacity he demonstrated along the way. Or perhaps both.
Because that’s the thing about McCandless’s story. It isn’t so much that it’s difficult not to form an opinion of him one way or the other; it’s that any opinion formed is bound to be fluid, rapidly shifting from veneration to condemnation and back again. It’s fair to say McCandless was an estimable guy, not just talking in rhetoric about the societal evils of homelessness and hunger but actually going out and attempting to do something about it. It’s also fair to say he was kind of an asshole, treating his parents with relentless cruelty on account of some unrealistic moral standards he for some reason held them to. But he wasn’t an asshole for going to Alaska, seemingly unpreparedly, and succumbing to what he should have known better to avoid. For that he was only a kid, a kid who took big risks (as kids are wont to do), but ultimately a kid who just got unlucky.
One thing I kept thinking about while reading this book is the idea of self-reliance. Because it isn't really an absolute, right? There are degrees to which one can be self-reliant. I mean, even Thoreau went into town periodically to buy tools or to barter for whatever. Does that invalidate his approach? Did McCandless take the concept to an extreme by forsaking a map because maps are drawn by other human beings? (The answer to that is YES.) But by the same token, what is wrong with categorizing our own lives as “self-reliant” if we are able to perform all of our daily tasks without the assistance of others? I don’t really endorse this argument, by the way. I’m only saying that I think there is value in striving toward a state of self-reliance, but I simultaneously hold that survivability will certainly drop to zero the closer one actually comes to completely attaining it.
642 reviews127 followers
In this short book by a pre-eminent outdoors writer, one experiences an American tragedy – the saga of a smart, idealistic, and profoundly misguided young man. Christopher McCandless, a talented young university graduate from an affluent suburban family, turned his back on “traditional” ideas of American success, cut ties with his family, gave away all his money, and went West, seeking a transcendent experience in the isolation of the Alaskan wilderness – but instead found an early death from starvation. In his 1996 book Into the Wild, writer and outdoorsman Jon Krakauer tells the story of this young man, Christopher McCandless, in a compelling and dramatic manner.
From the time of his childhood, Krakauer harboured a passion for mountain-climbing, and his books have often combined an appreciation for the beauty and glory of the outdoors with a cautionary quality – a plea to the reader to understand that the wilderness can be as dangerous and unforgiving as it is beautiful. These themes apply to Into Thin Air, Krakauer’s 1997 account of surviving a disastrous 1996 attempt to climb Mount Everest, as well as they apply to Into the Wild.
Into the Wild developed from an article about McCandless that Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine in 1993; the article generated more letters-to-the-editor responses than any other article in the history of the magazine. The dramatic, almost archetypal quality of the story of Chris McCandless’s life and death makes it understandable that reader interest in the story would be so intense.
The early chapters of Into the Wild chronicle Chris McCandless’s upbringing in a well-to-do household in the tony D.C.-area suburb of Annandale, Virginia. His relationship with his parents was always somewhat fraught, but they seem to have thought that he might be finding his life path when he attended Emory University in Atlanta and graduated with excellent grades. After his graduation from Emory, however, Chris McCandless abandoned his law-school plans, gave away all his money, and headed west, leaving his parents no forwarding address: he simply disappeared from their lives. He must have felt, Krakauer suggests, that “At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence” (p. 22).
He even gave himself a new name – “Alexander Supertramp.” While Krakauer does not speculate on the meaning of the name, the first name “Alexander” seems clearly enough an indicator of an ambition to conquer new worlds. At first, I thought the last name “Supertramp” might mean that Chris McCandless was a fellow fan of the British progressive-rock band of Breakfast in America fame; but in fact, the name was probably inspired by the book Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) by W.H. Davies, a Welsh writer who had spent years living the rootless life of a “tramp” in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States of America. Perhaps Chris McCandless hoped that he, like Davies, could be an outstanding success in the transient lifestyle – a “super-tramp.” Unfortunately, his hopes would go unrealized.
Krakauer seeks to understand Chris’s iconoclastic and adventurous spirit, even while critiquing the impractical aspects of Chris’s quest for meaning and fulfillment – the manner in which Chris’s idealism was, all too often, unencumbered by any degree of realism or critical thinking. Toward that end, Krakauer quotes extensively from the journal in which Chris described his wild adventures.
At one point, Chris McCandless befriended an older gentleman, Ronald A. Franz (not his real name), who lived alone near the Salton Sea in inland California, and the story of their friendship reveals much about Krakauer’s feelings regarding Chris and his quest. Ronald Franz befriended Chris, gave him shelter, taught him leatherworking, and even eventually offered to adopt Chris as a grandson; but Chris refused to stay and insisted on pushing on with his plans of going north to Alaska.
Of this time from Chris’s odyssey, Krakauer writes that “When McCandless came into [Franz’s] world, the boy undermined the old man’s meticulously constructed defenses. Franz relished being with McCandless, but their burgeoning friendship also reminded him how lonely he’d been. The boy unmasked the gaping void in Franz’s life even as he helped fill it. When McCandless departed as suddenly as he’d arrived, Franz found himself deeply and unexpectedly hurt” (p. 55).
Here, one of the major themes of Into the Wild begins to emerge – the idea that Chris McCandless’s quest, for all that it might appeal to many people’s visions of shaking off civilization’s restraints and seeking something more real, also has a profoundly selfish quality to it. That impression is reinforced by the breezy, preachy quality of McCandless’s later letters to the broken-hearted old man:
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun….You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. (pp. 56-57)
Chris McCandless made another friend, a farmer and businessman named Wayne Westerberg, in Carthage, South Dakota, and worked for a time at Westerberg’s grain elevator. But Chris, though he was asked to stay, insisted on leaving for his Alaskan adventure, later writing to Westerberg that “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again, I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild” (p. 68). It is from this letter, of course, that Krakauer takes the title for his book.
Background information on Chris McCandless’s parents, sister, and family life reinforces an impression that the reader is already likely to have gathered – that “It is impossible to know what murky convergence of chromosomal matter, parent-child dynamics, and alignment of the cosmos was responsible, but Christopher Johnson McCandless came into the world with unusual gifts and a will not easily deflected from its trajectory” (p. 106).
Krakauer says that, with his own history of adolescent conflicts with his father, and of being drawn to potentially risky outdoor activities, he finds that he can identify, in a number of ways, with Chris McCandless’s restless and inquiring spirit. He recalls, with regard to an ill-planned and near-disastrous mountain-climbing adventure that he endured on the Stikine Ice Cap in Alaska, that “at the age of 23, personal mortality – the idea of my own death – was still largely outside my conceptual grasp” (p. 150), and adds that “It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it” (p. 155). To those who assumed that Chris McCandless went out into the Alaskan wild in an act of elaborately staged slow-motion suicide, Krakauer, I think, would offer an alternative explanation. For Krakauer, Chris McCandless is an intelligent and talented - and at the same time, in some ways a woefully naïve - young man.
Chris McCandless’s final adventure involved his setting out along Alaska’s Stampede Trail, setting up in an old Fairbanks city bus that had been left out on the taiga as workers’ housing for a long-abandoned project, and seeking to live off the land by gathering edible plants and hunting game. While he lost a great deal of weight, as shown by photographs he took of himself over the course of his time in the bush, he seems to have maintained his health and his state of mind fairly well. But then one mistake and one fateful element of mischance set his adventure awry, and put him on a path toward his early death. Krakauer traces it all, even venturing out to the old Fairbanks City Bus #142 to see the place where Chris McCandless lived and died. His description of what he sees there is moving and evocative, as are his reflections upon the possible causes of Chris’s demise.
If you are going to read Into the Wild, then I would recommend that you seek out the 2015 edition of the book. Over the 19 years after the original publication of the book, Krakauer kept on coming back to the story of Chris McCandless. One gets the sense that, in spite of the wide variety of topics that Krakauer has addressed over the course of his career – “adventure tourism,” polygamy among some religious sects in the American West, sexual assault on college campuses – the saga of Chris McCandless may be the story that has stuck with him the most.
An emotional epilogue chronicles the time when Krakauer travelled with Chris’s mother and father to the Fairbanks City Bus #142 site. And a new afterword emphasizes how “The debate over what killed Chris McCandless, and the related question of whether he is worthy of admiration, has been smoldering and occasionally flaring for more than two decades now” (p. 205). Through the afterword, one can trace the steps in Krakauer’s ongoing fascination with the Chris McCandless story:
• 2007: A feature-film adaptation of Into the Wild is released. The film – directed by Sean Penn, with a cast that includes Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Catherine Keener, Zach Galifianakis, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Stewart, and Hal Holbrook, along with a musical soundtrack composed by Eddie Vedder – wins widespread critical acclaim and is nominated for two Academy Awards. In the same year, Krakauer publishes a new edition of the book, with a second possible explanation for Chris’s death. Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that this new explanation relates to differing properties of alkaloids.
• 2013: After reading an online article that offered a third possible explanation for Chris’s death, Krakauer initiates a new round of chromatographic research and publishes on the New Yorker website an article titled “How Chris McCandless Died.” The article is criticized for not constituting or incorporating peer-reviewed research. Krakauer continues with further chromatographic research and testing.
• 2014: Krakauer co-authors, with four doctorate-bearing scholars, an article that is published in the peer-reviewed journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine. This article sets forth a fourth possible cause for the death of Chris McCandless – one that (and again, I am trying to avoid the need for a spoiler alert) relates to amino acids rather than alkaloids.
All of this speaks to the fascination that the Chris McCandless story has held for Jon Krakauer. It may hold the same sort of fascination for you, too. For my part, I found that I could relate to Chris McCandless in a number of ways. Like Chris, I grew up in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.; and while I knew and appreciated how my parents had worked hard to give me and my siblings that comfortable suburban lifestyle, I couldn’t help seeing in it all a certain measure of intellectual and spiritual sterility.
I know that when I was in my early twenties, I could be arrogant, self-righteous, self-focused, and judgmental. We can probably all think of poor and risky decisions that we made at that time in our lives – but most of us have the good fortune to survive, and learn from, our youthful mistakes. What makes Chris McCandless different from many of us is perhaps a matter of degree rather than kind: his luck ran out, whereas, for most of us, our luck held.
Into the Wild is the sort of book that gets one thinking very hard about such things. If only one could talk about these issues with Christopher McCandless – who, at the time that I write this review from a ship anchored in a glacial bay in Alaska, would, if he were still living, be 55 years old, perhaps with children of his own.