Into the Wild
by Jon Krakauer
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Book Reviews of Into the Wild
Book Review: A well written story, a tragic truth, but we still don't know it all.
Summary: 4 Stars
The story of Chris McCandless is one that struck deep into the recesses of what I believe to be my soul. I can't really pinpoint how or why every time I think of the story (well written btw) or even hear the music that embodies the movie version of his tale, that it sends shivers down my spine and throughout my body. I can't help but understand the romantic idealism that Chris portrayed and sometimes the deep depression and dissatisfaction caused by materialism and greed and just the unfortunate realities of life that we all suffer through or just blindly accept. But in his way, he rebelled against it, even if it was ill-planned. He did not prepare well for the wilderness - this is true.
The book did a wonderful job of piecing together his spotty life after he left from Emory, and more-so an even better job of convincing its readers that this is the actual truth. The book may be non-fiction, but for the most part, Krakauer has to be reliant on the people that he intervied to piece the story together, and he has to rely on the inconclusive suggestions that McCandless may have poisoned himself with the seeds he was eating.
Yet what about our hunter-gather ancestors of the past, they didn't have so much as gore-tex shoes, a shotgun, fancy weather resistant clothing, bags of rice they could buy from the store, or any of these modern accoutrements that we do. With that said, they did however LEARN the skills necessary to survive. Did McCandless not bring food and supplies necessary to survive? He lived for three months! I think he was doing alright for a time, and I believe he managed to get by day to day in a caloric perspective. He lost a lot of weight and body fat, but he was getting enough calories for the majority of the time to where he could hunt and forage without great difficulty. Then something went wrong - No one ACTUALLY knows what went wrong. Krakauer can deduce whatever he wants and suspect that there were alkaloids or molds or whatever sorts of toxins, which have not been actually proven to be in Chris' system at the time, and he can then change his story again in another new version of the book. In his most current version, Krakauer deduced from weather forcasts from the time Chris was in Alaska, the seeds were then moldy because a persiod of ten days worth of rain, and Chris ate moldy seeds (don't you think he would have noticed mold??). I think Chris was intelligent enough to not eat moldy seeds. But that is something only Chris would have been able to tell us.
Life is tough, and anyone who calls Chris stupid himself is not even trying to look at the world through his eyes.
Book Review: Read the Book Before You See the Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
"Into the Wild" is soon to be released in movie theaters across the country and is already receiving rave reviews, not only for Sean Penn's role as the film's director, but also for its engrossing storyline. "Into the Wild," the nonfiction book, began with an article by moutaineer Jon Krakauer in "Outside" magazine. When a young man turned up dead in a school bus in the wilds of Alaska, north of Mt. McKinley, Krakauer began to explore the fascinating true tale of Christopher McCandless.
McCandless, son of a well-to-do family from the Washington, DC, area had just graduated from Emory University in Atlanta. His family thought that he had plans to continue on to law school, but McCandless had another vision. After graduating, he donated $25,000 (intended for law school) to OXFAM and began on a journey that would take him across the country, north to Alaska, and ultimately, to his own untimely death.
Not only did Chris McCandless give up all his worldy possessions, he abandoned a middle class mindset and vision of life for himself. Instead, he followed the ideas and ideals he found in the books of Thoreau and Tolstoy (among other authors) and lived by his own wits. He spent considerable time in the desert of the Southwest, but his vision was always to adopt the life of the wild, as envisioned in books of Jack London.
Along the way, McCandless--who renamed himself Alex McCandless or even Alexander Supertramp once he arrived in Alaska--met a variety of individuals, all of whom remember him as a thoughtful, hard working, intelligent young man who sought to follow his own vision of the way life should be. He was not a loner, although he spent considerable time on his two year journey by himself, living off the land. He also cut off all ties to his family, even eventually with his closest sibling, a sister. He did not want anyone or anything to deter him from his vision, from finding his "truth."
Author Jon Krakauer does an amazing job with this tale, interweaving interviews with those who knew McCandless and helped him along the way. He also compares the desire of McCandless as a young man on an unusual path to his own youthful desires to scale dangerous mountains alone. "Into the Wild" is not the type of story going from point A to point Z in a straight line, but it will engage you even as it sidetracks into other stories, other visions, other experiences of dreamers like McCandless.
Don't miss Krakauer's book! The insight and thoughtful approach he has taken in this book toward his sometimes unknowable subject will provide a wonderful background to the movie.
Book Review: "God it's great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you."
Summary: 5 Stars
What a sad tale. Having first seen the movie, I wanted to know more and so read Krakauer's book. The book, of course, gives many more essential details the movie never goes into, such as the devious behavior of Chris McCandless's father, and perhaps the real cause of Chris' tragic death.
I haven't read any of the over 1000 reviews posted here. I get the sense, though, that some people find this story unworthy of being told, or that Krakauer is somehow biased in the telling of it. I disagree completely. This story is one that is happening every day. At some turning point in our lives, we faced a decision: to join up with society and seek success within it or to rush into the great unknown, for whatever reason. In Chris' case, he turned his inner turmoil into a spiritual quest for the new, the beautiful, the extraordinary, and the natural world which would somehow remove him from the corruption of his own existence, as polluted by his father and mother.
I think Krakauer does a fantastic job in immersing us in Chris' passionate life. Almost no detail is spared. And parallels to Chris are given with others who have attempted to live in the wild, away from society's soft pleasures and easy ways. Yet no one was quite like this kid. One cannot help but think what he might have become: a fanatic Obama supporter? A deeply religious monk? A great social worker? A devoted father? A Green Peace leader? It's almost a certainty, however, that whatever he would have done, he would have thrown his heart and soul into it.
There's no doubt that his sad, lonely death was an accident. As a father myself, I look on this book as a cautionary tale and a warning. Our children certainly are beyond our control at some point down the line, so all one can do as a parent is just be there for them, as nonjudgmentally as is humanly possible. No one was able to stop Chris from his path to Alaska, but one senses he was gaining much-needed wisdom out there in the wilderness. He was on his way back. That is the overwhelming tragedy here: the finality of his frivolous death.
We are reminded again and again in this book of "the soul-flights of the adolescent" and the glorious ideals harbored within his or her uncompromising being. Extraordinary quotes from the works of Thoreau, Pasternak, Jack London, and others are intermingled with the overwrought writings of Chris himself. How can we not feel empathy for his troubled spirit and his longing heart? Ironically, one of the last stories he read was Tolstoy's "Family Matters." Perhaps that title holds more meaning for all of us than we realize.
Book Review: The end of an idealist
Summary: 4 Stars
5 von 5 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich:
The end of an idealist, 16. August 2008
Glorious or inglorious, that is here the question. Alex Supertramp is a downshifter par excellence, who still needs at first the non-downshifters for his gradual self-realisation. He is an adventurer and freedom-seeker and he is not satisfied with little. He resigns materialism, the urges and lies of the American society and tries to break out into the wild nature, to experience "real" life. To late it dawns upon him that nature is no garden Eden and that some attainments, not so much of the civilization, rather of the socialisation are reasonable. It is a surprising end that Krakauer describes with the help of the diary of the unfortunate. The end of Alex is cruel and shows that it is vain to romanticize nature. Unfortunate could be the wrong word. If Alex would not have renounced such reasonable artefacts like a map, which he intentionally left back, or at least if he had informed about the locality, he could have made it easily to survive. That he wanted it is shown clearly by his desperate struggle against death. Experienced adventurers always calculate with emergency cases when they plan their special tours. Idealism needs carbohydrates! Alex was sheepish, overambitious maybe simply silly. Yes, exaggerated idealism is sometimes nothing else than density.
But it would be wrong to judge this young man. He made a decision and he paid for it. Did he find self-determination? No, no man can exist for himself, the freedom some are searching is nothing but an abstract and nature is not nice at all! She is like she is. Without man she is nothing at all. Nature is there for man, but she does not know it. But man has to know it.
The sojourn in nature is a good opportunity for self-reflection. Krakauer implies that Alex could have reached the goal to live his idealism until the very bitter end. He is not different to mountaineers who notwithstanding the risks want to have their extreme experience. There is nothing left than the hope, that instead of the romantic transfiguration of a life in the wilderness or the intended union with nature - a thing that cannot exist - in the face of death the simple recognition prevailed that life, that loves and can be loved is the most sensible and praiseworthy. A lot of knowledge for a young man in our times.
A recommendable book. Krakauer did not draw conclusions. He did not want to interpret too much into it. Perhaps because he is guilty himself of extreme adventures.
Book Review: The book is very good, and the hate people have for the kid is morally wrong.
Summary: 4 Stars
Usually, I hate to review a book on any grounds other than the quality of the book itself, but as I read the one-star reviews, I was very bothered by the number of people who said "well, the writing is great, but the kid was a fool/ an idiot/ etc." First, the writing....it's very good. It's a four-star book. There are moments where Krakauer gets a little hyperbolic and over the top, and in the early stages of the book he doesn't do a great job of keeping the narrative clear- I found it hard to follow Chris' journey through the lower 48. Also, at the end, when the author devotes a lot of time to explaining the potential seed pod poisoning that may have killed Chris, it seems a little out of place and drags the pace slightly. Other than that, the story is riveting and told with a great amount of passion.
As far as Chris McCandless, I was saddened and angered to read in the book about the hate mail Krakauer received and about the anger directed towards Chris McCandless. We live in a time when there are plenty of Americans, myself included, who think we are doing more than our fellows for the environment by turning the thermostat up to 80 during the day and putting out our recycling bins. There are many of us who feel very sincerely the plight of the poor but don't donate to Oxfam or Harvest Hope because we are too "poor", yet we own HD Televisions. This story is the story of a young man who had high ideals for himself- maybe not ideals we all share, but lofty ones nonetheless. He was truly concerned about hunger- so he gave almost every last penny he owned to charity. He believed in living a life of spiritual, not material value, and surviving in nature, and he did that. He never asked to be helped other than a ride or a sofa to crash on, he never asked to be pitied, and he never blamed anyone for anything. This young man lived his life fully in his ideals, alone. It ended tragically and he did some things that were foolish, no doubt. But this was not just some dilettante. This kid kayaked the colorado river on his own with no training. He spent two years rootless in the American west without coming to harm. And he lived in the bush in Alaska for nearly 4 months. There have been many highly skilled and trained hunters, climbers, and woodsmen who have died in the wild from nothing more than bad luck, and no one calls them "holy fools." McCandless, for living his ideals to the fullest with kindness and charity to those he met was more than admirable, he was virtuous, and those who castigate him are unkind and unjust.