Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
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Book Reviews of Into the Wild
Book Review: Heroic or suicidal?
Summary: 5 Stars
John Krakauer's book got over 1,100 comments at Amazon.com and was made into a recent movie, so the story of Chris McCandless' death in the Alaska wilderness interests many.
I connect with the story in several ways, as follows:
1) A difficult father/son and inter-family dynamic can propel a young man on an outward "heroic journey." After college I moved 1500 miles from home partly from this desire to find an independent place apart from my extended family.
2) Young people often desire a taxing travel journey as a means to self discovery. I've known many young people who took extended solo trips and my own cross-country journey from after college was this kind of journey that included the desire for new experiences and risks.
3) The long-distance runner is accustomed to enduring pain in pursuit of victory. McCandless was a hard-core competitive runner who relished the challenge of enduring the accompanying pain in cross-country running. He refused to accept necessary survival equipment people offered him partly because he wanted to do things the hard way. Having run cross-country and track, I can relate to this "no pain, no gain" impulse.
4) The individual who confronts wild natural beauty in solitude can secure deep inner rewards. Many of my pivotal memories involve solitary experiences with nature, so I understand the draw of the solitary encounter with the wild.
5) Being destitute and at the mercy of circumstances allows us to connect with exhilarating experience - this weird juxtaposition of self-reliance and dependence on the kindness of strangers. I've experienced this several times when our car broke down far from civilization and people "miraculously" came along to help us.
6) Some kids are just wired differently than "normal." McCandless was strong-willed and refused to let anyone tell him what to do, especially his parents. He also thought he was smarter than others. Some people just make up their mind what they're going to do and nothing can deter them.
7) Some young people, for whatever reasons, reject societal values and mores. History reveals examples of people who share this solitary inclination: highly intelligent, injured by others, idealistic, on a mission. Krakauer mentions medeival Irish monks as fitting this category.
8. It is a quality of youth to think nothing is impossible and to be willing to take risks. Later in life after some risks have caused painful damage, we become more cautious and self-protective.
9. People who are intelligent and capable often find that success comes easy. They get used to having confidence that they can overcome any obstacle. The harder the challenge, the more they relish the opportunity.
So, I think McCandless had a mix of these qualities and characteristics, some positive and some detrimental. It's great to have confidence, so seek solitary connection with nature, to be willing to suffer pain and discomfort in the heroic journey. However, it is detrimental to be over-confident in refusing wise counsel.
Sometimes these qualities can become a dangerous mix - the ignorance of youth mixed with the over-confidence of youth often leads to trouble. It is the fortunate young man who makes it through to his 30's without suffering damage. But when the dangerous qualities are present in extremes, it is usually a prescription for disaster, as was the case for McCandless.
He was extreme in his cut-off from his family and from his past identity as an educated, comfortable, upper-middle-class person. He was extreme in his desire to do things the hard way, such as eating only rice for weeks at a time. He was extreme in refusing help or advice from people. His desire for solitary connection with the wild was extreme.
Apart from these extremes, he might have survived as a rugged outdoorsman like many rock climbers, skiers and mountaineers. However, his extremes led him to tackle an Alaska survival project that included no safety net. The result was almost predictable. Was McCandless' journey heroic or suicidal? I don't think it was intentionally suicidal, because I think he realized he was placing himself in a risky situation. He knew enough to know he could die if things went wrong.
He was smart enough to research hunting skills, but not smart enough or patient enough to gain actual hunting experience before placing his life at the mercy of his hunting abilities. He knew enough to take a gun, but not enough to know what kind of a gun was needed, much less how to be proficient in using a gun for survival.
I've seen profiles of survival fanatics in Alaska who actually do what McCandless attempted to do - they live alone by their wits in wild Alaska. But to succeed, these people first gain years of wide experience in all manner of survival skills. They learn what it takes to survive an Alaska winter before they launch out to attempt it. This preparation and survival seasoning us what McCandless lacked and thought he could do without. His hubris cost him his life.
Book Review: Wilderness
Summary: 5 Stars
Chris McCandless graduated with top of the class grades from Emory University, a stellar athlete, and fun person to be around. He was from a well to do family, had a nice sister, and many friends and relatives. What made him do it? What made him want to leave his home, and hike across the country to the Alaskan wilderness alone and without really any provisions or supplies to sustain him in such an unforgiving environment?
Chris graduated from Emory College in 1988 and soon after began a journey of a lifetime. His journey came to a close in 1992 when his body was found by two moose hunters in a deserted bus two-hundred miles northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska. Although his journey at times seems foolish and unintelligent, there are many lessons that can be taken away from it.
In the bestselling narrative, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the author attempts to uncover what made this young man leave all of his possessions and family behind. The wild can be a scary place. Denali National Forest is one of the harshest climates in the world. During the winter, it can reach temperatures of fifty below. "Alexander Supertramp," a drifter, a free soul, wandering the country with nothing but his pack on his back, is Chris McCandless transformed into a somewhat mythic character who dares to defy nature itself. Christopher loved his times as a hitchhiker. He gave himself this name at the outset of his journey. This novel made me greatly appreciate nature, and the power that it has. At any time nature has the ability to end a life. We must always remember that. It is not often that a young man has the vision and peace of mind to leave his home and everything he knows. He is able to see what is really important in his life, hence, the donation of his life savings to a worthy charity. He is able to see through the affluence around him, and look past the mansions and technology to see what is really crucial in life, love, passion, and the freedom to make choices for oneself. Some depict Supertramp as being arrogant, foolish, and stupid for attempting to take on the wilderness. I see him as a young man, whose curiosity and appreciation for nature make him want to be a part of it.
Krakauer who would become famous a year later for his book Into Thin Air, was marvelous in his depiction of nature and Supertramp's journey across the country. His ability to captivate the readers mind into the situation is truly spectacular. His use of knowledgeable vocabulary, and in-depth knowledge of the character and his beliefs, allow him to show the reader what McCandless was thinking and saying at all times
One can say whatever he wants about the stupidity of a young man with nothing more than a large bag of rice, and a Plants and Animals Guide for Alaska, to attempt to survive in the wilderness. But it is truly amazing that if not for a passage left out of the guide, he very well may have walked out of there come spring.
Christopher Johnson McCandless was a young man from a well to do family, who was able to invent a new name and life for himself.
"I will miss you too, but you are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at things, - Christopher McCandless."
Book Review: Modern Day Vision Quest
Summary: 5 Stars
Having loved the movie, and long put off reading the book (whose cover blurb sold me on it long before I knew of how well Krakauer wrote), I finally have read Into The Wild.
It is a life changing book, for me - a brilliant piece of work almost impossible to quantify for others, but I'll take a shot, briefly.
There are a lot of people (Alaskans, in particular) who resent the attention paid to Chris McCandless. He is considered by some to be an arrogant, and ill-prepared elite who had no sense at all to attempt what he accomplished. At the end of his great adventure he died, after all. As if that fact lays bare the nature and heart of what McCandless accomplished on his personal journey. The book spends a great deal of time addressing this attitude directly, and while everyone is all too aware of the errors and faults (some of which can be interpreted as arrogance, not using a map for instance), the author's impressions, research and conclusions tell a very different story.
This isn't about Alaska, or dying in Alaska. It is about our culture's detachment from honest, obvious and impacting rights of passage and how this natural need is bound to cost us the lives of some of our young - the ones daring enough to try to live life according to their own beliefs, passions and need for honest, truthful self discovery.
I shouldn't say what it is about, really. I've read many reviews and opinions wherein the writer gives their interpretation of 'what it is about' and accuse others of 'not getting it'. That is one of the beauties of this book - it is necessarily going to carry a different message to many different people.
Parents may face the cold reality that they do not ultimately control their children when they mature - and that the grey line between childhood and adulthood necessitates some dangerous transitions, if it is to benefit the adult in the making.
Mortality isn't something many in the West are comfortable with - to have died (whatever quality of life proceeds it) is the ultimate failure to many people. That this attitude prescribes a life of fear and limitation seems to escape most. Chris lived more life than many such people, and did so in 1/4 the time.
I'm predictably rambling and being less coherent than I'd like, so I'll start to close with a quote from the book:
"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 that in most others. Danger 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. 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."
I feel that McCandless ultimately gave us a worthy example mixed perfectly with a cautionary tale, and the jewels he unearthed through hard work most of us would never dream of attempting. After all was said and done, he concluded "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED", an intensely powerful conclusion for someone to attain after leaving everyone else behind.
Book Review: Every Page is an Adventure
Summary: 5 Stars
"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless...Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter."
Although the author, Jon Krakauer, starts off the story with the protagonist, Chris McCandless, who has taken an adventure into Alaska and never returns, Into the Wild is a compelling story that can be read and enjoyed by all ages. Krakauer tries to give the readers the conclusion and makes them understand how it happened. It allows the readers to figure out and understand the actions that lead up to the finding of McCandless's body in an abandoned bus in the wilderness. Krakauer really wants the reader to be able to recount on McCandless' journeys and understand his reasoning behind all of them. As this is a true story, Krakauer was able to accurately recount the adventures of Chris through talking and hearing of stories by other people who met him along the way.
The title, Into the Wild, is extremely fitting for this book, as he just seemingly vanishes into the wild without a trace. He leaves behind his previous life, burns his cash, loses his car, and takes no maps or anything for himself into the wilderness. McCandless is ready to endure nature and whatever it throws at him. He wants to be able to rely on his surroundings and be able to survive on nature, rather to rely on material objects for him to be able to survive.
Along with the narrative, Into Thin Air, about an expedition to Everest, Krakauer has a large amount of experience in writing about the dangerous side of the wilderness, a skill that is prominently portrayed in this book. Krakauer has a large amount of experience in the wilderness that is similar to McCandless, and he recounts pieces of his own experiences throughout the Into the Wild.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who loves to read about adventures in the wilderness and a story of a boy who wanted to turn his life in a completely different direction. Although, Krakauer had already told me the ending, and there would be no surprise for me at the end, like many books. Every page I found there was a surprise for me. This book caught my attention from the beginning and held my attention until the end, turning every page into an adventure for me. From my personal opinion, I usually never liked finding out the conclusion in the beginning of the book. But in this example, Krakauer tries to give the conclusion in the beginning to give the reader a feeling of confusion, making the reader want to figure out what happened to this young kid. It gave me a motivation to find out the events that led up to his death in an abandoned bus in the wilderness, and causing me to read the book in about two sessions.
As a fifteen-year-old, I can completely relate to the feeling of wanting to be out in the wilderness surviving on your instincts. After all, every kid wishes they could be a free soul and be able to wonder off into the distance.
Book Review: Krakauer Takes Care
Summary: 5 Stars
When I read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, as I have twice now, I find myself criticizing the subject rather than the writer. The book is the story of Chris McCandless, a twenty-four year old man from a well-to-do family who hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the bush. He died there, leaving behind a family he hadn't spoken to in more than two years and bewildered friends and acquaintances he met along his travels.
The book chronicles his approximately two-year hike across the United States. He hitchhiked, tented, slept in the desert, and somehow settled on the idea that a summer in the Alaska bush would--if not change it--give his life a deeper meaning. In his mind, he was following the path of the writers he loved, most notably Jack London. But he also emulated Tolstoy in his lofty ideals: McCandless was one who seemed to believe, as his father put it, "that you should own nothing but what you can carry on your back at a dead run." Chris reveled in scrounging for the next meal.
To me, as someone who has been poor and will be poor for the foreseeable future, McCandless's endless romanticization of the hobo lifestyle smacked of unbelievable self-absorption and hypocrisy. Here was the son of a man who had top-secret security clearance and a mother who worked alongside her husband to create a successful business. He had excelled academically all through school and could have the job of his choice or create his own business fairly easily. Only someone as well-to-do with such an easy path paved before him could believe he was a better person than the "plastic people" with whom he was forced to share breathing space (such as the people with whom he briefly worked at McDonald's--many who were not financially much above poverty) by hoboing around the country.
But perhaps I am being harsh; McCandless was young and no more hypocritical than I was at his age. And Krakauer, by telling his own story of his relationship with his father, which led to his harrowing climb of Alaska's Devil's Thumb, brings the reader to a more compassionate view of McCandless: he was young and brash and ill-prepared and perhaps even foolish, but he was not stupid, and his death was the result not of his dramatically heeding a "call of the wild," but of two small errors that turned out to be pivotal and irreversible.
At any rate, Krakauer is a fine, fine writer, and he tells McCandless's story as only a young man who had a similar relationship with his father as Chris did to his can. Yet in the book he is gentle with Chris's parents, writing about them as non-judgmentally as he does about Chris. It's clear that the wisdom he came to in his own life somewhere along the line parallels that of Chris's, only there's a point where Chris's line stops and Krakauer's keeps going. Krakauer was lucky to have survived his own brush with death and not only live to tell the tale, but forgive his father--something McCandless will now never have the opportunity to do.