[book] Into the Wild

[gaymer77]

So I'm taking this summer school English class and we had to read the book Into the Wild. I found this book extremely boring and could only get through the first 3 chapters. I did, however, find a website similar to Cliffs Notes that gave a breakdown of the chapters, themes, characters, quotes, and analysis of the book & quotes. I just finished my essay about the book and wanted to get some feedback from people about what I wrote. Does it seem like I understood the book & actually read it or is my bullshit too thick and I come across as not understanding it? And in case you're wondering why I make reference to ethos, pathos, and logos its because this was supposed to be a rhetorical essay that incorporated those.

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Christopher Johnson McCandless died all alone in the Alaska frontier after giving up all his belongings and money. He left his family and friends behind and set out on a journey. Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, explores the events that led up to his death and the relationships he made along the way. In his writing, Krakauer shows the reader why McCandless may have done what he did. He also explores the father-son relationship of both men. Krakauer uses some of his personal experiences in life to compare his life to that of McCandless. “It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.” (155) Chris McCandless may have been looking for adventure and to get away from it all but what ended up happening was an unprepared young man met his death.

For thrill seekers and adventures, Into the Wild has been almost an anthem of sorts for the ultimate get-away. After climbing Devils Thumb, Krakauer writes, “A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence.” (142-143) He then continues, “all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.” (143) This trancelike state Krakauer describes is one of the things that thrill seekers and adventurers are searching for. This allure to mountain climbing, and high-risk activities in general, is what Krakauer was essentially describing. One cannot have the mundane problems in life intruding the intense focus that is required to reach a meditative state like Krakauer shows.

Jon Krakauer claims in the book that Chris McCandless’s actions were not unique or unusual for men his age. McCandless may have grown up in a well to do family in a nice suburb but that didn't change that he felt the need to rebel against society and his family. “It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure. That, in large part, is why so many teenagers drive too fast and drink too much and take too many drugs, why it has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war." (182) When McCandless left for his journey, he may have been looking to escape the rules and pressure he had to fit in with society and from his parents. Had he survived, he may have been looked upon with admiration from young men who wished to follow in his footsteps. I do not feel that if he had succeeded he would have basked in the admiration he would have received. But he didn't make it and because of this, many have vilified him claiming he was not prepared and arrogant when the reality is he was mostly doing it because of his upbringing. Krakauer later continues " It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes. McCandless, in his fashion, merely took risk-taking to its logical extreme.” (182)

Krakauer set out to write a book that detailed the death of Chris McCandless and to offer insight into what led up to his death. In it, he goes further into detail about the journey, struggles, and death of Chris McCandless. He also delves into the father-son relationship and how it was like his own upbringing. Krakauer was most likely writing the book for people who were fascinated with the news of McCandless’s death and those who have yearned for escaping their mundane life to set out on an adventure full of independence from everyday life. In the book, Krakauer describes his father as a person who is overbearing and expecting much from him. He came from a well to do family and was expected to go to an Ivy League college and become a doctor or lawyer but he opted to become a carpenter and mountain climber instead. McCandless was also from a well to do family and had similar expectations set forth by his family. He was a great athlete and had just graduated Emory University with honors. Instead of getting a job he liked and settling down, McCandless gave away all his money to charity then dropped out of sight for two years before his death. He remained a free spirit until the very end.

The need for “getting away from it all” that some people have is what Krakauer was responding to in his book. Chris McCandless wanted to be free of everything and that included human relationships. In the book Krakauer claims McCandless was “relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it.” (55) McCandless had deep issues with intimacy. In the two years that he was gone, McCandless never contacted his sister whom he was very close to. He may have met several people along his journey, he kept them at a large distance emotionally. Krakauer continues that McCandless “had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family. He’d successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm’s length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he’d slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz’s life as well.” (55)

In Greek, ethos means “character” and our word “ethic” is derived from it. Jon Krakauer’s appeal to ethos is all throughout the book. By going on the journey and meeting all the people Chris McCandless met along his way, Krakauer is appealing to ethos. Krakauer could have easily sat behind a desk and made phone calls to reach out to people McCandless knew or met along the way. He could have easily called reporters who ran the initial articles locally about the death. He could have easily called rescue workers in Alaska to get more information about where Chris’s body was recovered from and to get more information about the area he was found in. Krakauer chose not to do the easy way about this matter.

The word pathos in Greek mean both "suffering" and it means "experience." The words sympathy, empathy, and pathetic come from that word. In writing, the appeal to pathos is the appeal to your emotions. In his book Into the Wild, Krakauer appeals to all your emotions at one given time or another. His conversation with Billie McCandless about her recounting her son Chris’s death is meant to touch at the heart strings. “As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow.” (132) That passage shows the grief that a mother goes through long after their child has passed away.

Aristotle coined the term logos as an appeal to logic. It simply means to appeal to your logical senses. This may be by citing statistics or facts, using historical comparisons, or citing authorities on a subject. Krakauer does this in Into the Wild. Krakauer tells of other historical figures that have ill-fated escapades and all the interviewing he did of people Chris met along the way. In the book, one learns about people like Gene Rosellini who came from a wealthy family and decides to live like primitive man did. He succeeded in living for over a decade before deciding that the experiment failed and then killed himself. Carl McCunn is another person who died while in the wilderness like Chris McCandless. Krakauer recounts his conversation with Roman Dial who accompanied Krakauer to the bus that McCandless was found in. “’When I first started coming to Alaska, I think I was probably a lot like McCandless: just as green, just as eager. And I’m sure there are plenty of other Alaskans who had a lot in common with McCandless when they first got here, too, including many of his critics. Which is maybe why they’re so hard on him. Maybe McCandless reminds them a little too much of their former selves.’” (185-186) Dial teaches at Alaska Pacific University and is a renowned adventurer.

We may never know the exact reasons for Chris McCandless to do what he did. We may not know for sure what killed him either. It seems like everyone who has read Into the Wild has their own take on why he did the things he did. What we do know is that the death of this young man is a tragedy that brought pain to his family and many that he came across in his two-year long journey. Krakauer said it best, “In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.” (155)

[Puupi]

GJ taking an English class (I assume voluntarily?) and not reading what you are supposed to and then act like it's all good.

Some people.......

Asking for homework help isn't allowed on these forums either.

[Deleted]

Read the damn book, or atleast watch the movie (Eddie Vedder made some damn good music for eat) or just fail the class.