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Summary: UNFAIR: THE HERO'S QUEST SUCCEEDED, BUT THE HERO DIED.
Review: Joseph Campbell wrote of the "Hero's quest," that difficult individual journey risking life for authenticity and an inner power that allowed the "hero," finally, to return to life with that special inner strength awarded only to those with the powerful, demanding spirit that drove them to seek out these life-threatening and life-granting challenges. The most painful part of this story, if Krakaeur has it right, is that this young man had licked his demons, had completed the hero's quest, and was finally ready to return, to complete the hero's journey back home. Then to die of food poisoning from a food his "scientific" book told him was edible --- it is frightening and disturbing because we're so used to thinking, romantically, that in only we'll endure and persevere, we'll triumph. We're uncomfortable seeing that even in these dramatic lives, the final power in life is Chance.
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Summary: Very unsettling, yet I couldn't stop reading it
Review: Krakauer turned a personal tragedy into a public debate. Was this kid really a "free spirit" trying to find himself or an arrogant son trying to punish his father? How you answer that question will probably tell you more about yourself than about Chris McCandless. Perhaps that's why so many readers find the book disturbing - but one you can't stop reading. If you don't find yourself thinking about this book when you have finished reading it - you definitely didn't "get it".
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Summary: A disturbing journey "into the wild" heart of modern man
Review: This book perfectly captures the dangers of feeling too much, thinking too much, reading too much, and being hurt too much. Krakauer, who reveals much of his own idealism in this book, investigates the death by starvation of an idealistic Emory graduate Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp. Krakauer follows the journey of McCandless, conjectures several possible reasons for his demise, interjects the stories of several idealistic young men (including himself), and interviews everyone he could find who met McCandless during the two years between his disappearance from Atlanta and the discovery of his body in a schoolbus outside the Denali National Park in Alaska. A must-read for anyone who has ever considered leaving it all or going out for a life of adventure in America. Krakauer skillfully addresses the reasons why people in America are attracted to the idea of the wilderness at a level that is extremely attractive to non-literary fans. Thoreau, Melville, Twain, and Tolstoy (among others) are quoted throughout the book from passages highlighted in books found with McCandless' body which effectively shelight on this tragic story.
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Summary: Can very strongly resonate with same seeking readers.
Review: Better than Krakauer's other book, Into Thin Air. Outstanding analysis on determining WHY, young, and unfortunately, fatally foolish, McCandless set out to "find himself". Krakauer is as good as you can get in placing the reader into the mindset of this intelligent, yet embarrassingly sophomoric young man. The strong resonance is with many of us that have desperately sought the same compelling answers. Sadly, McCandless stupidly takes Thoreau, Emerson, et al, into hyperdrive, and in effect, unwantingly, kills himself. Sorry sympathizers, but even the most elementary correct "woodsy" person will tell you of the profound sense of Respect one should have for the nature and the wild. Translation: you never "conquer it"; it Permits your existence and you never, not respect it. Nonsubscribers are the ones that more easily and frequently die during outdoor activities. As such, this book of Krakauer's provides an invaluable lesson in this fundamental understanding. Exceptionally well written and captivating. ...And for those same seeking readers, as vivid an encounter looking into the mirror as you can get.
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Summary: A thought-provoking look: the wanderer inside unleashed.
Review: I first was amazed, then disappointed, then puzzled by the matter in this book. From the outset, I was saying, "I would NEVER do that! He must have been crazy; just ridiculous..." But, then I realized I was having trouble putting it down. If I did not have the things around me which I love so much, and did have some of the same inner drive and courage, I would probably try something similar. Krakauer's in-depth treatment of what appears to be something else shows us all some of the inner wanderer we sacrifice when we settle down into our ho-hum "so-called" lives.
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Summary: compelling, haunting, and wonderful
Review: This book was most definitely one of my favorite reads, once you pick it up it is hard to put back down. Makes you want to throw away the bonds of society and live in a romantic world of man and nature. I am somewhat disheartened by the apparent misreading of the book by some people, I think McCandless' story is misunderstood by people who can't comprehend leaving our materialistic-industrial society for nothing but peace of mind. Three cheers for Krakauer who made us aware of this amazing story, also the author of the incredible "Into Thin Air," a story of the tradgedy of a climb up Mount Everest in 1996.
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Summary: Beautiful Blueberries
Review: Christopher McCandless's last journal entry before dying of starvation in the Alaska bush was simply the words "Beautiful Blueberries". Over the previous two years he bought a secondhand canoe on impulse and paddled to Mexico, lived on the streets of Los Angeles with bums, camped in the Arizona dessert with hippies, tramped through almost every western state occasionally holding odd jobs, and lived completely off the land in the Alaskan backcountry. McCandless's epic journey separated him from his parents and peers, a world of security and material excess, and a world "in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence". It was a journey which would have been a complete waste if it weren't for Jon Krakauer's book entitled Into the Wild. A lot of people believe that McCandless was an idiot. He was "simply one more dreamy half-caulked greenhorn who went into the country expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found only mosquitoes and a lonely death". Some people blamed Krakauer, in the magazine article which preceded the book, for glorifying "a foolish, pointless death". But the beauty of Krakauer's writing is that he doesn't glorify Chris McCandless's life or even try to hide his personal weaknesses. What comes through instead is a vivid portrait of McCandless's journeys and an examination of why people are attracted to high risk activities. Krakauer begins the book with Chris McCandless hiking into the Alaskan wilderness to his ensuing death. He does not return to this scene until the next to last chapter, effectively forcing the reader to see McCandless as more than an unprepared misfit who deserved to die because of the risks he took. We learn of his adventures tramping around the continent, discern how McCandless differs from people whom he had been favorably compared to in the outdoors community, learn of his family and upbringing, and we are told of a similar adventure in Alaska which almost claimed the authors life. Only then are we returned to the morbid Alaskan scene and the controversies surrounding McCandless's death. Krakauer succeeds in writing a powerful book because we become attached to McCandless's dream and sympathize to a greater degree with his desire to undertake what he labeled as the ultimate challenge. It is also the untraditional aspects of the book, in which he goes about examining Chris McCandless through his own life, through others who have a similar desire for adventure, and through an examination of the novels he read, which turns the book into something greater than a story of Chris McCandless. Into the Wild is not a fluff story about a misdirected youth; it has themes to which anyone who has ever dreamed of undertaking their own adventure, however small, can relate and gain insight. Overall Krakauer believes Chris McCandless wasn't that different from anyone else who liked adventure. Throughout the book there is an underlying battle against McCandless's critics by trying to justify the journey. Krakauer confesses that after writing a magazine article on McCandless he remained "haunted by the particulars of the boy's starvation and by vague, unsettling parallels between events in his life and those in my own." Unwilling to let McCandless go, Krakauer spent more than a year retracing the convoluted path that led to his death in the Alaska bush, chasing down the details "with an interest that bordered on obsession" until he finished writing the book. In this fierce passion, Krakauer is not only telling of McCandless's life but his own, and in the process trying to make a world of critics understand why he, McCandless, and countless others are drawn to a life of potentially suicidal adventure. This passion draws the reader in, spins them around and spits them back out into the world with a different perception of life. This passion makes Into the Wild an amazing book.
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Summary: Why was this book written, let alone published?
Review: A tragedy, yes. A smart kid with many problems. But what do we learn from this? What insights do we achieve? Simply a kid who in his arrogance and because of his inability to address the real issues in his life "flew too close to the sun" and died tragically. Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Krakauer is an extremely gifted writer, but his talents need to be focused elsewhere.
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Summary: I have never had a book make me this mad
Review: Krakauer's book gave me the strangest feeling...I was mad but couldn't stop reading. It is a terrible story to read, but at the same time extrordinarily compelling. I have read the book several times and believe that the best way to treat the subject is not as "The Alaska Story", but as McCandless' entire journey and what made him do it. This book is about a man searching for complete sanctuary -not about a kid hitting bad luck up in Alaska
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Summary: Excellent portrayal of the search for self
Review: Into the Wild ==? A call to Live well Some reflections after reading "Into the Wild"... Why not leave one's regular environment to find out how others live? Or, more importantly, how you live! Discard the distracting unnecessary trappings of our modern society, and try to live another existence. The collision between who you are now, and situations/people very different than what normally encountered, produces a montage. What results?? A "new" you? Maybe a better "you"! A person able to cope better with the pressures of modern society??? I am not sure how prepared individuals are at really coping and managing their lives, to be very productive, creative, and human, by simply accepting the way their peers live, without much thought and experiment. Further, the lack of any culturally supported form of a "rite of passage" does not exactly encourage resourceful and independent thinking. Sometimes, it seems, there are lots of adults bumbling around like teenagers. Chris could have been more prepared for a trek into the bush; a better sleeping bag, a few hand flares, more than 10 pounds of rice! But he at least had courage to try another existence, a more simpler one, which involved things as easy as buying a used canoe and getting lost in a network of canals (in Mexico). Or buying cheeseburgers and distrubuting them to the poor. Further, in going on his journey, he seemed to recognize the need for growth, to become more civic minded, and thus designed his own rite of passage. When was the last time you "went into the jungle to kill a lion"? Or spend a week in isolation to find out who you really are, as was done in some native american tribes?
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