Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jon KrakauerBrand: Krakauer
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-21
ISBN: 0307387178
Number of pages: 207
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Into the Wild
Book Review: Don't kill the messenger
Summary: 5 Stars
Jon Krakauer writes sympathetically but it is still possible to keep from falling under McCandless' spell.
I am the same age as Christopher McCandless and while I have lived and traveled to some far-out places (Christmas vacation in Hohhot, anyone?), I never hung myself out on the edge as he did. Then again, perhaps I was not troubled by the same demons. I don't necessarily see the mental illness that Peter Christian does (see personal insights below). I think that's just a face-saving measure to explain away a pattern of poor decisions on McCandless' part.
Ultimately this is a compelling book about a young man who wouldn't have been so compelling if not for his desire to be different. What if, like others, he starved to death in the middle of Central Park? Would there be a book and a movie? Would countless others make the pilgrimage to see Fairbanks City Transit System No. 142 if Chris had managed to walk back out of the wild?
I think in his heart, Krakauer feels bad for the guy. Even the original article (for Outside magazine) was titled "Death of an Innocent." But defending McCandless' reckless actions as the bravado of someone who wanted to be "first to explore a blank spot on the map" doesn't cut it with me. After all, McCandless lived (and, ultimately, died) in an old bus. It's not like he was building survival shelters.
Then again, perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps we should give credit to Chris for at least having faith in himself if nothing else. Hiking out to an abandoned bus in Alaska and living on squirrels and a bag of rice is more than most of us would do. At the very least, "Into the Wild" provides an opportunity for each of us to question how far (literally and figuratively) we would go to express ourselves and find answers.
I was in northern China for much of the period that Christopher was wandering around the American Southwest. Then, when he headed north to Alaksa, I was living in Washington, D.C. and working in Virginia, very close to where Chris grew up in Annandale. We could have easily switched places (upbringing, education, desire to travel). Did he gain insight I can never have? He's dead so we can't ask him.
Said Jim Gallien after dropping off McCandless (who was then calling himself "Alex") at the Stampede Trail: "I thought he'd probably get hungry pretty quick and just walk out to the highway, That's what any normal person would do." The problem was that Chris--to his credit and also his misfortune--wasn't normal. He was idealistic and brave, but also selfish and lucky. He had been helped (indeed, even saved) by strangers many times in the past, which probably led to an inflated notion of his own survival skills.
I am rating the book 5 stars for the quality of Krakauer's writing (at once investigative and compelling), despite my own inability to embrace the main character, even in spirit.
Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger's Perspective
by Peter Christian
Both Chris McCandless and I arrived in Alaska in 1992. We both came to Alaska from
the area around Washington, D.C. We were both about the same age and had a similar
idea in mind; to live a free life in the Alaska wild. Fourteen years later Chris McCandless
is dead and I am living the dream I set out to win for myself. What made the difference
in these two outcomes?
There was nothing heroic or even mysterious about what Chris McCandless did in April
1992. Like many Alaskans, I read Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild" when it first
came out and finished it thinking, "why does this guy rate an entire book?" The fact that
Krakauer is a great outdoor writer and philosopher is th e bright spot and it makes a great
read, but McCandless was not something special.
As a park ranger both at Denali National Park, very near where McCandless died, and
now at Gates of the Arctic National Park, even more remote and wild than Denali, I am
exposed continually to what I will call the "McCandless Phenomenon." People, nearly
always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving
wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are
practically nonexistent. I know the personality type because I was one of those young
men.
In fact, Alaska is populated with people who are either running away from something or
seeking themselves in America's last frontier. It is a place very much like the frontier of
the Old West where you can come to and reinvent yourself. In reality, most people who
make it as far as Alaska never get past the cities of Fairbanks and Anchorage because
access is so difficult and expensive (usually by airplane), travel is so hard, the terrain is
challenging, the bears are real, and so on.
A very few competent and skillful people make a successful go at living a free life in the
wild, build a home in the mountains, raise their children there and eventually come back
with good stories and happy endings. A greater number give it a try, realize it is neither
easy nor romantic, just damn hard work, and quickly give up and return to town with
their tails between their legs, but alive and the wiser for it.
Some like McCandless, show up in Alaska, unprepared, unskilled and unwilling to take
the time to learn the skills they need to be successful. These quickly get in trouble and
either die by bears, by drowning, by freezing or they are rescued by park rangers or other
rescue personnel-but often, not before risking their lives and/or spending a lot of
government money on helicopters and overtime.
When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did
wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent
very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail
without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his
predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful. Consider where
he died. An abandoned bus. How did it get there? On a trail. If the bus could get into
the place where it died, why couldn't McCandless get out of the place where he died?
The fact that he had to live in an old bus in the first place tells you a lot. Why didn't he
have an adequate shelter from the beginning? What would he have done if he hadn't
found the bus? A bag of rice and a sleeping bag do not constitute adequate gear and
provisions for a long stay in the wilderness.
No experienced backcountry person would travel during the month of April. It is a time
of transition from winter's frozen rivers and hard packed snow with good traveling
conditions into spring's quagmire of mud and raging waters where even small creeks
become impassible. Hungry bears come out of their dens with just one thing in mind--
eating.
Furthermore, Chris McCandless poached a moose and then wasted it. He killed a
magnificent animal superbly conditioned to survive the rigors of the Alaskan wild then,
inexperienced in how to preserve meat without refrigeration (the Eskimos and Indians do
it to this day), he watched 1500 pounds of meat rot away in front of him. He's lucky the
stench didn't bring a grizzly bear to end his suffering earlier. And in the end, the moose
died for nothing.
So what made the difference between McCandless and I fourteen years ago? Why am I
alive and he is dead? Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide while I
apprenticed myself to a career and a life that I wanted more badly than I can possibly
describe in so short an essay. In the end I believe that the difference between us was that
I wanted to live and Chris McCandless wanted to die (whether he realized it or not). The
fact that he died in a compelling way doesn't change that outcome. He might have made
it work if he had respected the wilderness he was purported to have loved. But it is my
belief that surviving in the wilderness is not what he had in mind.
I did not start this essay to trash poor Chris McCandless. Not intentionally. It is sad that
the boy had to die. The tragedy is that McCandless more than likely was suffering from
mental illness and didn't have to end his life the way he did. The fact that he chose
Alaska's wildlands to do it in speaks more to the fact that it makes a good story than to
the fact that McCandless was heroic or somehow extraordinary. In the end, he was sadly
ordinary in his disrespect for the land, the animals, the history, and the self-sufficiency
ethos of Alaska, the Last Frontier.
Sherry Simpson also wrote an excellent piece, this one for the Anchorage Press. It is much longer, so I cannot post it, but it is titled, "I Want To Ride In The Bus Chris Died In" and is certainly worth a read.
Here's a teaser:
"This is what bothers me - that Christopher McCandless failed so badly, so harshly, and yet so famously that his death has come to symbolize something admirable, that his unwillingness to see Alaska for what it really is has somehow become the story so many people associate with this place, a story so hollow you can almost hear the wind blowing through it."
Also see:
Grizzly Man
P.S. Who the hell is John Adds?? (Shows up on amazon as the author.)
Summary of Into the Wild
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. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter....
What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.
Described by friends and relatives as smart, literate, compassionate, and funny, did McCandless simply read too much Thoreau and Jack London and lose sight of the dangers of heading into the wilderness alone? Krakauer, whose own adventures have taken him to the perilous heights of Everest, provides some answers by exploring the pull the outdoors, seductive yet often dangerous, has had on his own life.
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