Anecdotes In Into The Wild

When the young Chris McCandless set off into the wild in April 1992, many people were unsure of whether or not he would make it out alive. Unfortunately, Chris died in the Alaskan wilderness and captured the attention of a curious writer. Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, was very intrigued by what had caused this young man headed to a life of future and promise to leave everything behind to pursue a life of hardship. In the book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer uses letters, testimonies, analogies, anecdotes, and language to help divulge why Chris McCandless turned his life upside down and was more happy with his life after doing so. “Here is a copy of my final transcript. Gradewise things went pretty well and I ended up with a high cumulative

One such person was Carl McCunn who was stranded in the wilderness and ended up taking his own life to avoid slowly starving to death. One of his friends stated that, “...Carl was too laid back. He was a party boy.”(84) This situation had a similar end to Chris’ story there a a bit of a difference between the two men. Chris was able to survive four months in the wilderness before dying, with very few resources to begin with. He also didn’t take his own life because, we can assume, he assumed that was the coward’s way out. It also appears to the reader that Chris, while not prepared in material things, mentally was aware of what he was going to face and was ok with that. However, it appears that Carl, according to his friend, was not completely aware of how harsh the wild could be. Chris appeared accepting of things and had his fair share of people tell him to take more supplies with him and be careful and to make sure he knew what he was doing out there in the wilderness. By showing that compared to others was in fact very well prepared, at least mentally, Krakauer shows his audience that Chris was not crazy; although many of the readers of the original article assumed Chris had a death wish as being