Into the Wild

Rating:
Summary: An Enlivening Quest of Self Discovery
Review: Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild is an exhilarating memoir of a single man-Chris McCandless-who decides to abandon his place in society to embark on a journey into the wild. McCandless' decision to forsake his possessions and life In Atlanta, GA is buttressed by his passion for excitement and need for discovery of himself.
"I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life" (Leo Tolstoy, "Family Happiness").
Christopher McCandless' journey of self-discovery to Alaska is best described as realistic and stimulating. The novel opens with Christopher's death and backtracks all the way to the beginning of his journey. This structure grasps a tight hold of the reader, forcing them to continue reading so all their questions can be answered.
On a five-star rating system, I would rate this novel a 3 because though it is adventurous and attention-grabbing, It isn't exactly my genre of choice. I would recommend this novel to someone whom enjoys an escapade into the heart of the wild on a mission to do something electrifying and distinctive while discovering one's persona.

Rating:
Summary: Into the Wild (Rarrrrrrrr)
Review: Imagine yourself in the wilderness of Alaska. You don't have a vehicle, you're alone, and the only food you have is what you find. To many of us this sounds like a frightening situation, but to Christopher McCandless this was a dream come true. Into the Wild is based on true story about the travels and death of Chris McCandless. Because McCandless died, the book is told through his letters, journal entries, and accounts of people that he met along his trip.
Chris McCandless was from a well-to-do family. He went to college and seemed like a 'normal' college graduate. Instead of getting a job after graduating, Chris donated $25,000 of his savings to charities, and then set out to travel. He went by an alias and cut communication with his family. He drove cross-country until his car broke down, then he abandoned it and hitchhiked. The people that he met through his travels were very fond of him. Chris traveled mostly throughout the West. His travels ended with him dying of starvation on the wilderness of Alaska.
McCandless wrote to a friend, 'So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.' I felt that this quote really explained why he went on his trip. This quote was also my favorite. It is something that we all need to think about. So many of us look for the 'secure' job and disregard what would really make us happy. I think it took a lot of courage to do what McCandless did. I do not think that I could just leave everything and travel with no place to stay or destination. He lived off of what he had learned throughout his life and depended on his people skills. I really liked that he did what he had wanted to do and not what others had told him to do with his life.
The author, Jon Krakauer, wrote the book after writing a short article the in the magazine 'Outsider' about Chris McCandless. He became fascinated with the similarities of McCandless' life and his own. He in turn spent over a year retracing McCandless' trip in an attempt to find out all he could about this young man and his travels. Krakauer integrates some of his experiences into the book. I felt that this helped the reader relate to McCandless' experiences. It made the reader connect with McCandless as though they were actually with him on the journey.
I thought that Into the Wild was a great book overall. I think that if you like adventure books, you would love this one. The story is much more than just an adventure. It has many life lessons intertwined into it. For that reason, I think that most people would benefit from reading it. I feel the biggest point to ponder when reading it is: Was McCandless crazy for going out into the wild as little prepared as he was? As I stated earlier, I thought he was courageous for following his dream and not the norm. I'm going to end with a quotation from one of McCandless' last letters in hopes that this will stick with all who read it. 'Don't hesitate or allow yourself to make excuses. Just get out and do it.'

Rating:
Summary: "Into The Wild"
Review: Sometimes in life there comes a point when people need to discover their adventurous side. The question is how adventurous do you want to be? Are we talking overcoming a fear that you have had for your entire life? Trying a food that looks absolutely disgusting? Adventurous is all in the eye of the beholder, but in 1990 Christopher Johnson McCandless brought new meaning to the word. After graduating from college, he gave his life savings of $25,000 to charity and left town. He left behind a loving family, bright future, and his identity. His plan? To get away from the life that he knew and start a new one, one without the corruptions of society. He wanted to go Into The Wild.

The novel Into The Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, tells the story of Christopher Johnson McCandless. Chris was a young man when he left Atlanta during the summer of 1990. He would be on his own for almost two years. In August of 1992 though, his decomposed body was found by a group of moose hunters in the Alaskan wilderness. The novel is compiled of stories from family, stories from people he met along the way, and his journal entries. The author does an excellent job of telling the story with such limited information and the order that he compiles them is fantastic. In between the stories about McCandless he also includes stories about himself and his expeditions, and also a story about another youth that had the same fate as Chris. In addition he also includes viewpoints from people about McCandless's story. This was the major theme of the book. He was praised by some for his sense of adventure and his courageousness, and then criticized by some for his stupidity and lack of preparation for his trip into the wilderness.

Over the course of the book there are several arguments made that would suggest Chris was doing the right thing. First and foremost despite what anyone says, Chris McCandless knew what he was doing and was somewhat prepared for the Alaskan wilderness. He had been an outdoors type person all of his life. When he was twelve, he made it up to the 13,000-foot elevation mark on Longs Peak in the Rocky Mountains. Not only that but most people forget that Chris had been on his own for almost 2 years living off of the land and creating a new life for himself. He had been as far south as Mexico and had many near death experiences. He knew what he was getting himself into, and he actually did manage to survive in the Alaskan wilderness for several months. He tried to leave but high water made it nearly impossible for him to get back to the main road. He did something for several months that many people could not do for a week. Despite all of this evidence, many people still felt as if Christopher McCandless was nothing more than a victim of his own carelessness.

'Personally I see nothing positive at all about Chris McCandless's lifestyle or wilderness doctrine. Entering the wilderness purposefully ill-prepared, and surviving a near-death experience does not make you a better human, it makes you damn lucky'. This opinion was one of many that were sent to the author following the release of his story in the magazine Outside. Many other readers shared this viewpoint because they felt that McCandless wasn't very prepared for his journey into the wilderness. He didn't bring with warm clothes, enough food, and many other items that would have helped him survive. His story can be looked at as a triumph of the human spirit, or a bright future lost in the wilderness, depending on how you want to look at it.

I would most definitely recommend Into The Wild to just about anyone. It is very well written and regardless of what you think about Chris McCandless, you will enjoy this book because Jon Krakauer tells the story like no one else could. Whether you are an outdoorsman or not, you will be able to relate to some part of this novel.

Rating:
Summary: How Far Would You Go to Find Yourself?
Review: After reading Into the Wild by John Krakauer, I have a new appreciation and respect for nature. This wonderful book traces the real-life dramatic adventure that is the last year of Chris McCandless' life. Chris was a boy with a dream to leave the binds of society, and free himself into the purest of nature, the heart of Alaska. Krakauer, a journalist for Outdoor Magazine, was assigned to write a nine thousand-word article on the boy, took on the task of finding out what really happened to this young lost soul. He just felt so strongly for the story he had to know as much as he could, not only for himself but also for the confused McCandless family he felt so sorry for.
Krakauer traveled the long road that McCandless took from his prominent existence in Atlanta, just after he graduated from Emory University with honors; all the way to the Alaskan frontier where Alex's (after Chris left Atlanta he changed his name to Alexander Supertramp) decomposed body was found two and a half weeks after his death. Based on interviews with people who McCandless encountered on his odyssey, he was able to clearly piece together Alex's last year.
Among the possessions found with Alex's body there were a few books which all seemed to share his outlook, that is: how materialistic the world had become and the only escape was pure nature. Through the excerpts Krakauer selected to include in this book we see how common Alex's yearn to escape is, especially when he compares the letters of Everett Ruess and McCandless' correspondence to his friends (pgs. 87-97). As a person who grew up in a very rural area I empathize with his desire to go explore the untainted wild, as I'm sure many people do. The difference is that Alex actually went. Whether you come away from the book thinking it was sheerly naïveness or boldness that led him to his death, you will not put this book down.

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Summary: Curiousity Results in an Easy Read
Review: Through Chris McCandless, the protagonist of "Into the Wild," by Jon Krakauer, I came to realize that not everyone enjoys living in the depth of society. Instead, Chris resided to the wilderness, leaving after his college graduation to explore the west himself, changing his identity almost completely.
The style with which Krakauer wrote this novel turns it into more of a mystery, making the book hard to put down. The summary on the cover of the novel gives away what happens, however, the reader is not told how or why. This alone makes the reader ask him/herself what possibly could have happened to the young hitchhiker. The novel also drags for one or two chapters when Krakauer relates his personal experience to McCandless'. I do not find the two to be very similar, and seemed to unnecessarily interrupt the actual story.
The most intriguing part of the novel is how Krakauer makes it seem as though he was with McCandless throughout the entire adventure. There are many situations in the book that makes the reader wonder whether or not Krakauer made stuff up. For example, after Chris shot a moose, Krakauer explains that he, "butchered the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes...then laboriously excavated a burrow in the face of the rocky stream bank directly below the bus, in which he tried to cure, by smoking, the immense slabs of purple flesh." (166). This is confusing because the reader knows that Krakauer was not at the scene.
The passages placed at the beginning of each chapter are a technique that allows the reader to relate to McCandless himself, and how he viewed life. At the beginning of the 11th chapter, Krakauer places a quote selected from Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau that says, "Rather than love, than money, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices." (117). On this page, McCandless had written the word, "TRUTH," which shows that his actions were affected by his childhood.
Overall, the adventures of McCandless himself are an interesting topic even without Krakauer's narrative.

Rating:
Summary: Footloose and Fancy Free
Review: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer was assigned to my senior English class at a significant time in our high school careers and was met with few objections. Growing up in the typical New England fashion, I can empathize with Chris McCandless' desire to escape the repetitious, self-involved lifestyle that plagues Connecticut and Virginia alike. For me, college is the first escape but I am left wondering 'and then what'? Into the Wild tells the story of a young man who went in search of something more. After graduation, he picked up his backpack and hitchhiked across country. His family never heard from again, until he was found dead in Alaska. This story allowed our class the opportunity to question why a young man, very similar to all of us, chose to break from society and I recommend the book to anyone that is unsure where they are going.
Jon Krakauer uses his skill as an investigatory journalist to capture the small details of the life of Chris McCandless, allowing us to somewhat experience what Chris did. While the majority of my class believes that Chris was arrogant and possibly suicidal, I firmly disagree. The boy was used to success so it was natural that he assumed he could make it out of Alaska alive and he did not think that he was better than nature as some Alaskans believe. He obviously thought incredibly highly of nature, to completely leave his family, just to explore it. However, despite my beliefs concerning his reasoning, the fact is we will never know. That's why this book was so good. While Krakauer sometimes bored the reader with his own biography, he picked the perfect passages from interviews and letters enabling the reader to know Chris as a person, which made us question why he left his comfortable life. The excerpt from Into the Wild that explained it best to me was the preamble in chapter three. From Wallace Stegner's The American West as Living Space, "It should not be denied...that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west." While I don't know where the road always leads, I do know that there is just something about an adventure that really gets us going. I think that Chris was trying to escape and find 'that thing' and there was an unfortunate turn of events. I give Into the Wild four stars for its commendable efforts in the study of Chris McCandless.

Rating:
Summary: Tragic yet strangely inspiring
Review: This is a wonderful book that explores the human desire to explore and the hard cold truth of nature. Through most of this book I found myself identifying with Chris McCandless, admiring how he found no pleasure in the wealth his family offered, but instead found joy in the friendship and view of nature he found on the road. Yet in the end I was sad to see his dream of living of the land crushed by the hard reality nature offers. This is young man and a story I will never forget.

Rating:
Summary: Into the Wild
Review: I liked this book a lot, though it really is different from most books you'll read. As a non-fiction work, this book follows the life of Christopher McCandless through interviews with friends, family, and acquaintances. I can relate to this individual on multiple levels as he went to high school just down the road from me. He ran cross country in high school, as I did. He died in Alaska and I was born and raised there. Krakauer does a very good job of bringing to life someone that we actually know relatively little about. Chris's story is sad and yet poignant at the same time. It's hard not to respect not only his intellectualism, but his drive to understand the truth in life. While this ultimately cost him his life and is in retrospect the result of decisions few of us would ever make, it does strike a cord with me. This is one of the few stories that I actually find myself reflecting back on long after I finished reading the book.

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Summary: I read his college editorials and met him.
Review: Chris McCandless was the lead editor for the Emory Wheel and graduated a few years after me. I would occasionally go back on campus and pickup the Emory Wheel and read away. What struck me about Chris' articles was his stark alienation on any position. I had a gnawing feeling that this person was severely unbalanced. He wrote with a sort of libertarian anger fused with his personal diatribes (he hated most all of Reagan policies...i.e star wars- and at the same time all the polar opposites.) It was gut wrenching to read and to this day I do not understand why someone could not have seen it. Sad story but a well written book.

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Summary: Battle With the Civilized World
Review: After graduating college with high respects from teachers and excellent grades, 22-year- old Chris McCandless donated $25000 to charity and hit the road. When his body was found months later, his family had no idea that he had been planning a trip to Alaska for quite some time, they had no clues where he was, who he was with, or what he was doing. Chris traveled the country in search of himself. He travels from the East Coast all the way across the country to the West Coast and stays there traveling around for several months, hitchhiking and switching jobs, over and over making just enough money to survive. He makes many friends a long the way and strikes every one of them as a non-typical hitchhiker, because of how smart he is, and especially when they find out how educated he is. Chris finally makes it to Alaska in the spring of 1992, and lived solely off the land until the late summer, when he was struck with illness from a mistake of his own. This is an excellent novel to read, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading adventure novels, as well as coming of age novels, because Chris really grows up during the book, and as a reader you can definitely see that. Also, readers who have read "Into Thin Air", another one of Jon Krakauer's novels, and liked it, would feel the same about "Into the Wild". I enjoyed the adventure and the travel of this novel, Chris was truly an amazing young man, with much intelligence and confidence, he is the last person you would expect to leave his wealthy life-style and replace it with having next to nothing. This is truly a great novel CHECK IT OUT!!!