Walter Dean Myers once stated that “One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.” The Vietnam War, fought in 1955 to 1975, was the longest war in American history. This war was a conflict between the Communist North Vietnam and its ally Viet Cong, and South Vietnam and its ally the United States. During the Vietnam war, tensions in the United States were extremely high.
Going out into the wild all by yourself can be nerve wracking and lonely. Jon Krakauer makes Chris McCandless seemed like a noble person who took the initiative to try to go out and live into the wild. The book Into the Wild written by Jon Krakauer, is about a teenager named Chris McCandless leaving society and traveling to Alaska by himself with nothing else but a bag of rice and a small .22 caliber gun. Chris is heroic because he went to Alaska by himself without any knowledge of Alaska and didn’t know any of the dangers of Alaska. One way Krakauer make Chris seem noble is when Chris is about to enter Alaska he tells Gallien “ I’m goin’ to get on up there live off the land,go claim me a piece of the good life” (Krakauer 4).
“To symbolize the complete severance from his previous life, he even adopted a new name. … He was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny” (Krakauer). As early as the first few chapters of Into the Wild, the reader can already see the distinguishable features of a rebel. Not only does Chris McCandless possess rebellious qualities, but he admired writers like Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry David Thoreau, all of whom possessed the same rebellious attitude.
Into the Wild Essential Questions Essay Many people have different opinions of Chris McCandless. After Chris died in Alaska’s wilderness, Jon Krakauer wrote an article about Chris’s life. Some Alaskan natives wrote letters to Krakauer stating that Chris was an ignorant fool for believing he could live off the land without essential supplies. But they never knew what he actually desired.
Into the Wild “‘ He was unheeded, happy and near to wild heart of life. ’”Christopher McCandless, pseudonym Alexander Supertramp makes the daunting decision to go off grid and live a nomadic lifestyle. Author Jon Krakauer uses fervent diction and descriptive imagery to depict McCandless’s turning point in his life and beyond to his final days in the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer choses a specific tone to narrate the story, not far from a hypercritical sense.
In a way Chris Mccandless became a casualty to his own passion and obsession. “Into the Wild” is a book written by John Krakauer about a man who went from being a graduate at Emory University to fulfilling a drive and need of living as one with the wild. Mccandless had more courage than many people and he was willing to give up anything and walk away. Chris was a man seeking adventure, filled with confidence and a dream. It seems that he lived with one mindset that nothing could stop him and he was going to prove that; he hitch hiked his way through America to reach a point of personal fulfillment.
Christopher McCandless, a foolish, narcissistic young man confidently ventured into the Alaskan wilderness unprepared and paid for it with his life. At least that’s what some people believe about him, but McCandless was more than just a foolish kid. McCandless was a courageous young man that dropped the luxurious lifestyle given to him to follow his heart and live naturally in harmony with nature. McCandless was the embodiment of great philosophers’ ideas such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, he was morally driven and had dreams that nothing was going to stop him from reaching, and in many people’s eyes, that made him completely unworthy of the injudicious, woefully naive title he was given by hundreds of critics. Christopher McCandless, the central figure in Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into The Wild, was an ambitious man that developed
Chris McCandless is a complex and controversial figure whose life and death have captured the imagination of many. His journey, as chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild,”has been a subject of controversy and debate. While some veiw him as a hero, an adventurous spirit who pursued his dreams and sought to live life on his own terms, while others view him as a naive and misguided young man who continuously put his life at risk. However, regardless of one’s personal opinion, there is no need to justify McCandless’s actions. Instead of people assuming things, they should try to understand the reasons that he went into the wild.
Into the Wild tells the story of Chris McCandless, a young man who embarked on an adventure across the U.S. Chris lived for adventure, and sadly met his demise in the Alaskan wilderness. Chris’ death brought about a large debate as to whether Chris was insane or simply idealistic. Krakauer wrote Into the Wild to prove Chris’ sanity and soundly completes that task by using rhetorical devices to persuade his audience. Throughout the book, Krakauer uses ethos to develop Chris’ credibility by providing examples of people who are similar to him. For example, Krakauer provides multiple examples of people who were very similar to Chris, such as Everett Ruess.
To conclude, Krakauer uses three valuable techniques to capture the meaning behind Into the Wild and McCandless’s journey itself: narrative structure, epigraphs, and tone. Chris McCandless was an intelligent young man who sought adventure far from his dull stable life. He essentially went off the grid to capture what he wished for the most, which was ultimate freedom and happiness. It was like a tag on a shirt that keeps bothering the tenderness of one’s skin. It was the reason why the tag was ripped off.
Everyone he encountered and got close to thought he was following his dreams. His adventure into the Alaskan wilderness was all he talked about with his parents when he started college. At the beginning of each chapter of Into the Wild, there are quote(s) that relate to each chapter. The following quote was included at the beginning of chapter three from Wallace Stegner’s
Christopher McCandless, whose life and journey are the main ideas of the novel “Into the Wild”, was about an adolescent who, upon graduating from Emory College, decided to journey off into the Alaskan wilderness. He had given away his savings of $25,000 and changed his name to Alex Supertramp. His voyage to Alaska took him two years during which he traveled all across the country doing anomalous jobs and making friends. He inevitably made it to Alaska were he entered the wilderness with little more than a few books, a sleeping bag and a ten pound bag of rice. A couple months after his first day in the wild, his body was found in an abandoned bus.
The reader gets to join McCandless in his adventure across the country as he invents a new life for himself. He embraces the ideas and morals of Thoreau and Emerson in his journey. In the book, a man by the man by the name of Westerberg discusses about how McCandless is not destroying his possessions and journey around the wild because the wild he is suicidal or unintelligent. “You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent… He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”
Based on a real story, Into the Wild can make us think from different perspectives about what the main character Christopher McCandless did. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a dramatic but also remarkable story from a young, newly graduated, college student that escaped for a long wild journey but never came back. As time passes throughout the book, the reader may notice how the main character interacts with society and nature, finally McCandless dies in the wild but even though he was struggling for survival he died happy. Some people never get out of their comfort zone, others are tired of it and retire from their comfort zone to have different experiences in life, some are good enough or some are terrible.
He also explained that just as the deers are afraid of the wolves , so are the mountains afraid of the deer and the other species with the fear of losing its vegetation. For this he has phrased that “The wilderness we hunt is the salvation of the world” which means that that it must not be destroyed. His main point here is that only the land can understand the true significance of an individual who is playing its role in the ecosystem. This is story that tells us the importance of very living species in nature and our eco system. If anything or any specie is absent, then there is a high probability of imbalance in eco system.
