Into The Wild Compare And Contrast Essay

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Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, is a story about a young, twenty four years old, man who chose to explore the wilderness and his limitations. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He was intelligent, idealistic and a truth-seeker. One of the epigraphs, Krakauer used to start a chapter, is about Everett Ruess. Everett, a twenty years old man, also invented a new life for him by leaving the city to live in nature. His story was attracting to Krakauer because of the many similarities with Christopher McCandless’s story. Krakauer utilizes Everett Ruess's exploration story to compare Chris McCandless's relations, his attachment with books and commitment for change. Chris and Everett both had talented parents. Chris’s father worked for NASA and his mother for Hughes Aircraft while Everett had “a Harvard-educated father and an artistic, well-read mother” (James 367). Apart from having brilliant parents, Chris did not have good relations with them. He respected and listened to them but …show more content…

They carried books with them on the journey. Chris took nine or ten books with him. He changed his name to Alexander Supertramp. According to Merlin, the name comes from two books; Alexander from War and Peace and Supertramp from “Autobiography of a Supertramp”. One of Everett’s favourite books was Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne. His father said that “Everett may have identified with the book’s Captain Nemo, who hated civilization, explored unknown lands in the ocean, and invented a new language—just as Everett was exploring unknown deserts and learning the new language of Navajo” (Berger 7-8). Everett had carved ““NEMO,” with “Nov 1934”” (Lyon 89), into a cave stone. According to him, he was the Captain Nemo born in Nov 1934. Both explorers were fond of books and utilized them to satisfy their imaginations. Krakauer used Everett’s story to compare and highlight Chris’s personality and