Rhetoric In Into The Wild

Rhetoric and Jon Kraukauer ”I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!”(Last words of Christopher Mccandless, 199). The death of Christopher McCandless will always be one shrouded in confusion and the unknown. Death without an official reason remains difficult to capture, especially with a limited amount of resources. Jon Kraukauer, author of Into the Wild, attempts to recollect in a way that fosters understanding. In order to accurately capture the death in a way that will cause the audience to empathize and understand Kraukauer had to appeal to a reader's logical thought while also managing to paint a vivid picture of McCandless’s physical and mental state in his final days. Kraukauer begins his own analysis of McCandless's death with anaphora, in order to display the confusion, redundancy, and panic surrounding Christopher's final actions. The author keeps repeating the beginnings of Christopher's journal entries, “On August 9, he notes… On August 10, he saw… On August 11, he killed… On August 12, he dragged…”(Kraukauer 197). With this incessant writing of "On August", the audience is released into Christopher's

Within the description of Chris McCandless’s final photo, taken right outside the bus he would soon die in. “one hand holding his final note towards the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell.”(Kraukauer 199). Kraukauer makes it seem as if Chris was happy to be alive, just going about his day. The next piece of the description giving us a picture completely different. “His face is horribly emaciated, almost skeletal.”(Kraukauer 199). The author explaining the photo like this speaks volumes about Chris right before his death. Physically Chris was dying, but psychologically he was at peace. These descriptions help us to understand what Chris actually looked like in the end, along with a nod into his overall psyche at that