The Fallacy Of Hasty Generalization In Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

In 1997, Jon Krakauer wrote the nonfiction book Into the Wild. The book has received criticism, an example of this is the articles Craig Medred wrote. Medred is an untrustworthy and difficult to believe source because of his writing style, which include several fallacies such as Hasty Generalization, Appeal to Ignorance, and Ad Hominem.

In Medred’s writing, he often draws quick conclusions, known as the fallacy of Hasty Generalization. An example of this is when he implies Chris has schizophrenia: “I think evidence is there to draw a reasonable conclusion that McCandless was suffering from a mental illness: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, take your pick” (Beautification 2). With no actual diagnosis, Medred

Ad Hominem means you attack someone personally rather than using logic to debate their argument. Medred said, “When you abandon your car, and burn your money, you aren’t searching for yourself; you've lost yourself ” (False 2). Chris could have had many reasons to dispose of all of his possessions. Medred is pointing them out to paint McCandless as the villain in the story, because of the choices he made. Making him look like he just dumped all of his items without a care in the world. He repeats the Ad Hominem fallacy when he says: “American frontiers have always had a history of attracting adventurers, oddballs, ne'er-do-wells, and misfits … McCandless was a classic end of the roader '' (Beautification 2). Maybe McCandless could have had different reasons for going out into the Alaskan Frontier. The way Medred worded this makes it seem like Chris went to Alaska to die. It has never been proven why he gave up his life to have gone on this “journey”. Medred made Chris look like an incompetent person who makes questionable responses to the

An example of this is when Medred says “who (Chris) starved to death in Interior Alaska because he wasn't quite successful enough as a poacher” (beautification 1). Although Chris died of starvation, there could have been other reasons why he starved. It might not have been that he couldn't hunt down these animals. In fact, in the book Krakauer stated that Chris would have had some understanding about how to poach animals. Once more, Medred used this fallacy when he stated, “And he most certainly didn't go off to the wilderness searching for the meaning of life” (McCandless 1). How would Medred have known why Chris went into the wild? He would have had to be there next to him, asking him these questions. All Medred knows is the information McCandless wrote in his journals, so he could be missing the key points. Medred is making assumptions using only the bare minimum of information Chris wrote down. Using the Appeal to Ignorance fallacy is just a front, because he doesn't have any information about who Chris is, nor what he was thinking in his head. No one knows what was going through his head but himself. Medred uses pathos to assert false authority to make the reader believe what he is saying, out of the emotion he drives from his