For both McCandless and Krakauer, the combination of trying to please a difficult-to-please father, resenting authority, and discovering their fathers’ own great failings leads to an almost insurmountable rift. Hence we can see wild animals getting into villages and attacking humans. Into The Wild Analysis 1231 Words | 5 Pages. Krakauer’s first person point of view shows his thoughts and his experiences as he climbs the Devil’s Thumb. One of his photos shows a Ziploc bag full of these toxic seeds. Into the Wild Chapter 4: Transcendental Allusions. “The climbing was so steep and so exposed it made my head spin” (142). These young men also always seem to have some kind of demon driving them, whether it is a troubled relationship with their fathers, as with McCandless, Krakauer, and John Waterman, or something else. The two main ways you would hear about his story is through Jon Krakauer’s book, Into The Wild. He does not simply preach that his parents are too materialistic, or state that he won’t be as greedy as he believes them to be. In 1992, a pair of moose hunters came across an old, rusted bus just outside of Denali National Park. 5 Facts To Know About The Future Of Buddhism, Reasons Why Muslims Are The World’s Fastest-growing Religious Group, The Uprising At Sobibor Extermination Camp. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. Instead, he lives by his anti-materialism completely, giving away all of his life savings to charity, only making the bare minimum of money that he needs to survive, and keeping as few possessions as he possibly can. she wonders about a certain purpose in life. Although this decision is based on a sense of morality, it in fact causes McCandless to hurt those who care about him. Yet this level of freedom requires total isolation, for to be with others means to have obligations to them. The Question and Answer section for Into the Wild is a great He wanted to live a life that was completely different than the one his parents lead. Hence animals die due to dehydration, starvation, and even accidents. His first person point of view also symbolizes how McCandless could have felt during his hike on the Stampede Trail. Most important of these is how someone so compassionate, kind, and intelligent could have ended up devastating his parents, and all of those who loved him, so profoundly. There is also the thrill of pure accomplishment, man against only nature and himself, which allows him to feel that he truly knows what he is capable of, that he doesn’t need to rely on others, or on society, to survive. Krakauer spends about three years putting together first the article on Chris McCandless, and then this book. Into the Wild study guide contains a biography of author Jon Krakauer, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. For example, he refuses to get a hunting license because he doesn’t think it is any of the government’s business what he eats; were everyone to act this way, animal populations would be destroyed, and food supplies threatened. All maps, graphics, flags, photos and original descriptions © 2020 worldatlas.com, The Story Of The Union Jack: The National Flag Of The United Kingdom, The Outlandish Story Of Mike The Headless Chicken. There is still much debate happening over the cause of Chris's death. Should we admire mcCarless for his courage and noble ideas? McCandless describes what he is looking for on his odyssey, particularly on the Alaska trip, as “ultimate freedom.” It would seem that this largely represents, to him, freedom from other people’s rules and authority over him. Carine, Christopher’s younger sister, had difficulties getting over her brother’s death. Gallien, the driver who Chris rode the last part of his trip, was the last person to spend a notable amount of time with him. He wanted to live a life that was completely different than the one his parents lead. Krakauer can easily show his encounter with the wild and what runs through his mind. The Smithsonian Natural History Museum: Beyond The Public View, The Three Rs Of Animal Testing: A More Humane Approach To Animal Experimentation. Directed by Chris Sanders. Both Krakauer and McCandless are highly ambitious, and have highly ambitious fathers. McCandless's ultimate freedom is thus limited in scope, for on any larger scale it would be dangerous and potentially disastrous. One of the primary qualities McCandless constantly exhibited, which in turn led many to respect him, was his adherence to principles. The elusiveness of identity, or of truly understanding someone’s identity, is a theme both explicitly and implicitly present throughout Into the Wild. Every day you wake up to the sight of the beautiful, tall trees and the various wildlife living in the area. Cullina, Alice. Upon discovery, Chris’ corpse became a symbol of misguided passions and misinterpreted values and inspired many to explore and document his story of demise. Krakauer does not believe that this allure is significant to everyone, but it certainly is to a specific kind of young man -- one who is intense, passionate, driven and ambitious, but not satisfied with the opportunities or challenges society presents to him. Chris McCandless is a misfortunate young man who managed to starve to death a few hours hike off the George Parks Highway and was made into a celebrity post-mortem. On this journey, it is evident that Chris McCandless’ shunning of society was unjustified because he took the transcendentalist ideas expressed in Henry, The novel, Into the Wild, portrays a college graduate and successful homebody, Jonathan McCandless, taking a life’s journey that not even his parents expected. There is certainly more behind his odyssey than just anger at his parents, but his resentment of them does spread into the rest of his life, and seems to be closely connected to how isolated he becomes at Emory. Some people can deal with their dilemmas easily, but others go to the extreme to cope with their obstacles. He became slowly paralyzed. So there is a need to conserve trees and forests. The father-son relationship, and the potential for dysfunction within it, is an important theme in Into the Wild. This kind of freedom is inherently selfish. He ran away from his family on several occasions, and his actions, The beatification of Chris McCandless - Rhetorical Analysis Hans and Pete then tied a rope to … He packed up his camp and headed back to civilization on July 3. The allure of danger and high-risk activities is central to Into the Wild. However, he realizes he was a “refuge in nature” (189) and intended to abandon his solitary life and rejoin the human community. Unable to cross, McCandless returned to the bus. He was an underweight man in his early 20s, leading a life full of straining physical exercises combined with the nutritionally deficient diet, so he could not have much of a margin for error. This, in turn, adds to his revulsion against society generally, which is clearly a driving factor in his deciding to go into the wilderness. He follows McCandless's trails, reads his journals, even reads the articles he wrote for the student paper at Emory. “Ten months after Chris’s death, Carine still grieves deeply for her brother. One is left to wonder if, had McCandless found a way to forgive his parents for their shortcomings, he would not have felt the need to go to such extreme lengths in his quest for answers. Moreover, his inability to forgive his parents’ mistakes seems to be at the center of this seeming contradiction between his compassionate nature and his sometimes cruel behavior. McCandless was a courageous man. A sled dog struggles for survival in the wilds of the Yukon. Throughout his whole life he finds authority particularly oppressive, especially when exercised by anyone who he feels only has such power over him for arbitrary reasons. However, most students see McCandless as . GradeSaver, 30 November 2009 Web. Forgiveness, and the danger inherent in the inability to forgive, are central themes in Into the Wild.