Product Description: Using the true story of a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature.
Amazon.com Review: "God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless.
A fine piece of journalism Chris McCandless's story is one of intrigue. McCandless was a fearless, searching, hopeful young man who took off after college with little money to his name, and who eventually embarked on a wilderness survival adventure that cost him his life. Krakauer did a magnificent job of telling chris's story. It seems as though chris's adventure was researched with great care. The quotes cited from all of Chris's reads give more depth to Chris's character. The only thing that somewhat took away from the McCandless story was a little too much personal commentary from Krakauer (I am esp. referring to Krakauer's own climbing adventure - while interesting, I didn't feel it belonged). Overall, the McCandless story was presented in a way that was truly inspiring. It filled me with a desire to meet this enchanting kid and to plan a solo survival adventure of my own. I highly reccommend this book if you are interested in wilderness survival, man v. nature, and man v. society.
A tragic tale of a young man alone... I'm late in reading this book, but then I never read things just because they are popular. I've known about this story for a while, but my sister read the book and said it was really good. So I took it home. It's a very easy, very fast read. I was skeptical about it for two reasons...not enamored with the author because of another book he wrote, and also, my husband is a scoutmaster and on search and rescue, and we all figured that a young man who goes into the wilderness without enough preparation is not real intelligent. I have to admit I held onto the train of thought for most of the book. But much of what the author said about this young man, and his reasons for doing what he did rang true. Yes he made some obvious errors, but I know from teaching young adults that they don't think anything can hurt them. And they also tend to hold adults to what they say literally. As my sister said "If you talk the talk, you better be prepared to walk the walk." And this young man's own father did not do that, and left his child very disappointed in him.
My sister is also the mother of a boy with Asperger's, and she said she recognized some traits of this boy, including his not being bothered by being alone as similar to Asperger's. Maybe he was just a shade of this...so many are, and so many are not diagnosed.
This book should be read in high school I think, with an emphasis on preparation and letting people know where you are going to be. And also, it's a reminder to us to let our families and especially our children, know that we love them.
Krakauer's writing is good, the quotes interesting, the other stories of mistakes made in the wilderness applicable. This is not lighthearted reading, and leaves you pondering 'what if.'
Krakauer Does it Well Jon Krakauer's books are well written and researched. In Into the Wild, he has taken a complex true journey and handled it in a straight forward, thoughtful way. One is drawn into the story and held by suspense and a need to determine the psychological make-up and motivation of the subject. In the end, we are enriched by practical information and the sense that we too have made a journey of sorts.
Tragic and inspirational I recently reread "Into the Wild," and it's as good the second time as it was the first. Author Jon Krakauer deserves accolades for doing two difficult things. First, he did exhaustive research on an elusive person by literally tracing his path across the U.S. over a period of months. Second, he thoughtfully put together the elements of psychology, family history, natural history, and literature into this unforgettable book. It's one thing to do research; it's another thing entirely to present it efficiently and with deep emotion.
Ultimately, I don't think I would have liked Alex McCandless, the subject of the book. Though I have an independent streak, I'm not a dreamer, and I don't have a lot of patience for dreamers. I'd probably have been impressed with his skills and his energy, but I'd want to convince him to direct his energy towards something productive. But those reasons don't diminish the power of his story for me.
The story of "Into the Wild" is well-known by now. Chris "Alex" McCandless was a smart, athletic, and musically talented son of a NASA engineer. He chafed against authority and structure throughout his childhood, but he graduated from Emory University and seemed on his way to a career as some type of environmentalist or environmental lawyer. Instead, he dropped out of society, never to communicate again with his parents or sister. He embarked on two years of wandering around the U.S. West and Northern Plains. Mostly, he hitchhiked or rode the rails. He camped out in the desert, paddled a second-hand canoe into Mexico, slept under overpasses, and scrounged meals at missions. He worked at hard minimum-wage jobs. He was basically a tramp.
Eventually, he got it into his head to live in the Alaskan wilderness for a few months. His plan was to get as far from modern society as possible. This would be his greatest challenge, and one that he hoped would bring him spiritual strength and show him the "truth" he'd read in Tolstoy, Thoreau, Pasternak, and others. He got to the wilderness and did reasonably well for three months. Then, when he tried to leave, he realized he was trapped -- or, rather, he thought he was trapped. He didn't think very clearly about how to get back to civilization (which was less than 20 miles away), nor, apparently, did he explore any alternate means than hiking out on the exact route he took to come in. He starved to death.
Author Jon Krakauer meticulously tracked down people who met Chris (who renamed himself "Alex" McCandless) during his sojouns. Since those people live well outside the mainstream, Krakauer's investigation brings to light fascinating asides about the underbelly of our urbanized country. And he uncovers some possible motivations for Alex's restless pursuit of his own form of a nomadic, monastic existence.
Yet, Krakauer does not romanticize Alex. As a world-class climber and hiker, Krakauer understands both the things that motivate people to challenge the elements and the skills that are necessary to come back alive. He has empathy with Alex's motives (which are not unlike Krakauer's), but he lays out in stark detail why Alex's lack of knowledge led to his horrific death.
In this way, the book serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale. Alex inspires because he pursues a dream, because he seeks truth, because he feels pain and joy to the maximum, and because he is not afraid to be afraid. Few of us will ever step off the well-trod path in any aspect of our lives, but Alex did it to the ultimate degree. Yet, the book is obviously also about mistakes, and what it means to be so full of our vision that we don't see the real world that is around us, too.
A couple of other thoughts. First, Krakauer deserves huge credit for revisiting his original story about Chris McCandless and explaining what he got wrong in that piece, and the impact that those errors had on Chris' reputation after death. In an era when many reporters have been shown to lie, it's extraordinary to find a reporter who seeks to declare the truth, even when it puts him in a bad light. Second, some people have suggested that the book praises Alex too much. On the contrary, I think it downplays his courage and strength. Think about it: Could you hitchhike for months on end, scrounge food and live off the land, and then muck-out grain silos for a little cash, while charming every person you meet? All in a search for truth?
So-So This book wasn't horrible, but it wasn't brilliant either. I read it because i've read Into thin Air by Jon Krakauer and loved that book. Into the Wild was, overall, a good story line and written well, but wasn't really my type of book and failed to keep me interested throughout. It is about a boy named Chris McCandless who decides to ditch the average american lifestyle and take to the road. He gives away his savings to charity and ventures out to the wild. The book takes you through the places he traveld, the things he does, and the people he meets. It was pretty interesting but because of the format of the book, there was no suspense. I did not like how Jon Krakauer acted as if he knew all these details and facts for sure. He had never even met Chris McCandless, he doesn't know what words he would say, or his reasonings behind what he did. Sure he can guess, but his voice throughout the book became cocky, as if he knew exactly what happened when in reality, there are plenty of arguements circulating about how Chris really died. I wouldnt necessarily go tell anyone to read this one, but if you've got some time to kill you might as well. It's not horrible, but not the grasping story I thought it'd be either.
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