preview

Analysis Of Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

Decent Essays

In 1992, due to one man’s brash decisions, a mother lost her only son, a sister lost her closest friend, and that very man lost his own life. Within Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer is guilty of glorifying the tragic adventures of this man, Chris McCandless, and his escapade into the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer does this by praising McCandless’ naïveté and ignorance he has towards the dangers of his trip. Throughout the book, Krakauer continues to prolong his death and display it as a bold act, when it was simply an act of heedless rebellion and impulsiveness. Krakauer also portrays McCandless as a hero, but instead, McCandless was only another fool who fell victim to his own self absorption. Into the Wild tells a haunting account of one man’s self-imposed afflictions, and is a reminder that some will find horrid beauty even in the most tragic of stories. Jon Krakauer portrays McCandless as a naïve hero, who had no idea the perils he was walking into. Krakauer wants to make McCandless out to be a naïve hero who defied the odds thrown against him. Instead, McCandless was fully aware of the dangerous world he was traveling into and it was ignorance, not naïveté that kept him going. Krakauer writes “he was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction,” (44), trying to claim McCandless was under false impressions of the wild. In fact, McCandless knew exactly what the wild held for him. He makes the remark, “if this

Get Access