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Symbolism In Jon Krakauer's 'Into The Wild'

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Journal 1
Krakauer, Jon. Into The Wild. New York: Villard, 1996. Print.

Journal 2
In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer uses the symbol of money repeatedly to show the motives behind Chris’ madness. In the story Chris is motivated to venture off into the rough Alaskan wild to truly live out his life the way he wants too. Chris leaves behind all of his money and abandons society. Throughout the story we see many instances of money used as a symbolic explanation for Chris’ actions. Towards the beginning of the story in Chapter 4 we experience Chris burn all of his money before his trip, here money is shown as society and through him burning his money we are able to see his views against society and his needs to disconnect form it. We are faced with another encounter with the symbol of money in the author’s note when Jon describes Chris’ life talking about how he belonged to a family which was well off, here the symbol of money plays a vital role towards understanding Chris’ personal morals as money isn’t as valued to him as the rest of society (Chris’s disconnect from society is shown again). Money comes up again towards the beginning of the story in Chapter 1 when Chris is …show more content…

As each chapter come’s there is an account from Chris’ diary to accompany it. Along with this is some type of quote/ inspirational passage which lets us in on what is to come in the chapter ahead. Krakauer is able to maintain this structure throughout the whole book and through this we are able to pick apart the journey of Chris McCandless to construct our own opinions about his mysterious persona. The structure Krakauer creates for us in Into the Wild is significant to our understanding of Chris and his journey as it sheds insight onto his life from many different

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