Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer wrote, “Into the Wild” about a young man named Chris McCandless. The book follows Chris McCandless, on his independent voyages in the wild. Chris was a young man with a venturesome personality, who died in a profound way. Chris was a figure both admired and criticized in the years following his death. Author Jon Krakauer states, “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”? Chris McCandless is portrayed to be determined, free-spirited

A free-spirited individual is a person who thinks and acts in an uninhibited way without worrying about normal social rules. Chris exemplifies having a free-spirit in multiple ways throughout the novel. The most appealing example of Chris being free-spirited is, leaving his path to success for a life in the wild. Chris McCandless was free-spirited following his adolescence. Chris has a road to success by getting accepted into top notch colleges and coming from a wealthy family. Everyone has the dream of being successful, but in his mind there was more to life than simply fame or money. His free-spirit ran wild, thus leading him to escape alone into the wild. An example of Chris having a road to success would be him graduating from a prestigious school. “In May 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, where he’d been a columnist for, and editor of, the student newspaper, The Emory Wheel,and had distinguished himself as a history and anthropology major with a 3.72 grade-point average.”(Krakauer 16) Chris started to have second thoughts about having a successful life, his free-spirit took over. “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.”(Krakauer 18) Chris leaves his future successful lifestyle, to pursue something more passionate for

An outcast to society describes a person who has no place in their society or in a particular group. This is because society or group refuses to accept the individual. Chris exemplifies being an outcast to society, by not fitting into normal social standards of life. Chris never fitted in with society as an individual. He was always sort of an outcast to people, except to the people who fully understood Chris. Examples are shown in multiple ways throughout the book. The example that caught my eye in the book is Chris getting a job at McDonalds and his interactions with society. Even though Chris tried to fit in with society by getting a job and living a somewhat normal life, society had opinions on his efforts. For example his assistant manager’s opinion, “I don’t think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything. When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws.”(Krakauer 29) Another example would be how his friend Charlie describes him interacting with the community. “Nice guy, yeah, a pretty nice guy,” Charlie reports. “Didn’t like to be around too many people, though. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes-know what I’m saying? Liked to read books by that Alaska guy, Jack London. Never said much. He’d get moody, wouldn’t like to be bothered.”(Krakauer 30) The evidence provided above