As human beings, do we make our own decisions or do we allow others to make them for us? Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, analyzes Chris McCandless’s ability to do so. His purpose is to inform the reader of McCandless’s choices and how they led to his death. Mr. Krakauer concentrates on the individuality, death and dreams McCandless to bestow emotion to his readers. The author’s strongest appeal to pathos is when he considers McCandless’s individuality. He wanted to start a new life because of the constant battle he had against conformity. “He intended to invent an utterly new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience”(Krakauer 23). Krakauer uses the words “invent” and “wallow in unfiltered experience” to expresses to his audience the lifestyle McCandless was trying to achieve. McCandless didn’t want to live his life based on the social norm or follow the status quo, but to live a life of serenity and simplicity. He wanted to start over in every way possible, including, changing his name. While it may say “Christopher Johnson McCandless” on his birth certificate, he renamed himself …show more content…
Krakauer also appeals to pathos when explaining McCandless’s dreams. While McCandless’s original dream was to live a life of solitude, he later had a change of heart. “To shed a little of the armor he wore around his heart, that upon returning to civilization, he intended to abandon the life of a solitary vagabond, stop running so hard from intimacy, and become a member of human community”(Krakauer 189). The reader is now feeling a sense of mourning for what could have been. “Shed a little of the armor he wore around his heart” gives the audience a sense of hopelessness, fury and confusion. They are asking themselves “Why did you do this?” and “Why did he have to have this ending?”. The audience felt so connected to McCandless and now they must mourn the loss of someone they never knew. There is nothing worse than a failed
“But he didn’t, and there’s no way to bring him back”( Krakauer pg.203). Krakauer has a very serious tone because through following McCandless’s journey he got to be very connected with him. This serious tone shows that he is truly gone and that he will be missed.
Krakauer creates suspense by withholding McCandless’s fate until the very end of the passage. When Chris McCandless ventured into the wilderness alone he ended up trapped due to the heavy flow of the Teklanika’s River blocking his path. The narrator theorizes that perhaps McCandless was unconcerned with his only escape route being cut off due to his adequate
Jon Krakauer had the same experience as McCandless with his family and travel to Alaska, but Krakauer knew more about survival and had company in case of any danger. Krakauer compares, “as a young man, I was unlike Mccandless in many important regard… And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul” (55). Acknowledging McCandless’s background, Chris left society because, in Krakauer’s point of view, of the “agitation of the soul” and the “similar heedless” of society. McCandless didn’t agree with society’s standards that being successful meant having a well paid occupation, especially when McCandless’s parents enforced it onto him. McCandless truly did not want to uphold the wishes of his parents, for Chris to go to college and get high paying career, but it wasn’t what Chris really wanted, so he left all of his conflicts with his parents and his values or “agitation of the soul” to create a new identity as Alex Supertramp and live in the wild. In today’s modern world, humanity lives in an environment where people are controlled and dependent on others. Chris’s father is someone he despises because of his characteristic of being controlling. Walter becomes controlling over Chris, who pressured him into college. As a result, Chris has an “agitation of the soul” to become independent, and a “heedlessness” for society and had an “intensity” for
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
Jon Krakauer reveals the good in McCandless that is hidden from all his other previous mistakes. Although McCandless struggles with the concept of intimacy, he is gifted in the act of perseverance. Another thing McCandless has learned is survival, as presented with how long he stayed alive with limited resources. McCandless is a hard working individual as Krakauer as stated through the theme of perseverance. McCandless has many travel experiences, he’s traveled across vast parts of America, which is quite challenging especially with the lack of money because the world is a very materialistic place. His adventure through Mexico is another example of his survival skills as he only had very limited amounts of rice as food. Lastly, before he died
Throughout the novel, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer sincerely disentangles the haunting enigma of Chris McCandless. By tracing the places, people and experiences intertwined in the life of McCandless, Krakauer narrates the life story of a puzzling corpse found in a bus buried in the Alaskan frontier in a truly authentic way of storytelling. Although Krakauer inserts direct quotes from people who McCandless came into direct contact with and experts from primary source journals, Krakauer’s own voice in the narration of the dead man’s life is trustworthy due to the similarities the protagonist and the author share. Common connections such as similar paternal stress made outstanding impacts in both men’s lives, starting at a young age. Furthermore, a sort of agitation with the soul ailed Krakauer and McCandless fueled by a reckless persona confined in the modern world. Lastly, a craving for human contact when in total isolation troubled both the author and subject in their adventures narrowed in the natural world. The mutual bond apparent to the reader between Krakauer and McCandless makes the writing in the novel sincere enabling Krakauer to speak of a dead’s man life with profound authority and truth. Unconditional understanding through shared paternal issues, agitation of the soul, and need for human contact grants Krakauer access to divulge into the conundrum of Chis McCandless and authority to earnestly narrate the mysterious
Jon Krakauer uses pathos throughout the first few chapters of Into The Wild to help the reader further know and attempt to understand Chris McCandless’s personal view of life. Wayne Westerberg states in Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild,“‘Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often’” (Westerberg 18). Chris was always seeking more. He sought more from life and held others to a high standard. He looked at life differently, more in depth, and could not relate himself to many of the choices people make every day, let alone all the hate in the world. Chris would go off on his own for long periods of time but was not an introvert. McCandless touched the lives of every single person he met. Krakauer explains, “...he
In the author's notes he put “Through most of the book, I have tried--and largely succeeded, I think to--to minimize my authorial presence. But let the reader be warned: I interrupt McCandless’s story with fragments of a narrative drawn from my own youth. I do so in the hope that my experiences will throw some oblique light on the enigma of Chris McCandless”(Krakauer 2). By telling us that he will add some stories of his own make us realize that Krakauer has some relation with McCandless and it make us think that this book is more believable. In the book when he tells us that Chris just died for a simple mistake and tries to relate it to himself by telling the story of how he started to realized that going into the wilderness will change his life he emphasizes“I would go to Alaska, ski inland from the sea across thirty miles of glacial ice, and ascend this mighty nordwand. I decide, moreover, to do it alone. ” Just like McCandless, Krakauer had a lot in common with him, they both went into the wild of Alaska, which gives a lot of experience to krakauer to talk about McCandless death. In order for Krakauer to make McCandless not a crazy kid he made some other similarities between McCandless and some other people that died, with a lot of characteristics similar to McCandless and himself. Krakauer is the ideal person to criticate
Krakauer's rather informal yet factual tone enables him to relay the important details of McCandless's adventure while keeping the readers engaged in the story. Krakauer frequently inserts his own thoughts into the story, but his
Although Chris McCandless’ controlling and toxic family environment was a major motive for his escape, his deep-seated internal battle was simply an irresistible impulse for discovery and liberty. Chris’ journey shows a new level of freedom; what true independence holds. He set out into nature alone without support of family or friends, searching for a path unlike those of most, and running from a barred cage of conventional living. Unsatisfied and somewhat angry with himself and his life of abundance in money, opportunity, and security, his preceding experiences and determined character lead him to an inevitable flee into no-mans land. Throughout the novel, Krakauer wants the reader to understand that there is more to Chris than his habit of criticising authority and defying society’s pressures. He needed more from himself, and more from life. He wasn’t an ordinary man, therefore could not live with an ordinary life. Krakauer demonstrates this by creating a complex persona for Chris that draws you in from the beginning.
In Jon Krakauer's novel Into the Wild, the main character, Chris McCandless, seeks nature so that he can find a sense of belonging and the true meaning of who he is. However, it is the essence of nature that eventually takes his life away from him. At the end of his life, he is discovers his purpose and need of other people. After Chris McCandless death in Alaska, Krakauer wrote Into the Wild to reflect on the journey that McCandless makes. Krakauer protrays McCandless as a young man who is reckless, selfish, and arrogant, but at the same time, intelligent, determined, independent, and charismatic. Along with the irony that occurs in nature, these characteristics are the several factors that contribute to McCandless death.
Much of the human race live their lives in accordance to what society sees as acceptable, but Christopher McCandless disregards societal norms in the novel Into the Wild. Within the novel, Jon Krakauer explores the story of Christopher McCandless’s journey to Alaska and investigates the events leading up to his death. Krakauer tells the story concerning McCandless’s life in a fashion that reveals a truth about nonconformity. Krakauer sends a message to common readers that nonconformity is not possible and the only way to survive the world we live in is to conform to our surroundings. Jon Krakauer express’s his ideals on nonconformity within Into the Wild through his non-chronological organizational structure, the use of logical reasoning,
McCandless was trapped in a society that created an illusion of his own fake happiness while he was looking to discover himself. He possessed a desperate need to find the true meaning that only he could answer. McCandless quotes “I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me
Krakauer presents this tone by quoting the McCandless family. Carine, Christopher’s younger sister, had difficulties getting over her brother’s death. “Ten months after Chris’s death, Carine still grieves deeply for her brother. “I can’t seem to get through a day without crying” ”(129). Krakauer also explains how Christopher’s family all suffered from an eating disorder and acquired unhealthy weight gain/loss. “ “I just don’t understand why he had to take those kind of chances,” Billie protests through her tears.” (132). Krakauer secretly indicates sadness within the text.
The author skillfully uses literary techniques to convey his purpose of giving life to a man on an extraordinary path that led to his eventual demise and truthfully telling the somber story of Christopher McCandless. Krakauer enhances the story by using irony to establish Chris’s unique personality. The author also uses Characterization the give details about Chris’s lifestyle and his choices that affect his journey. Another literary element Krakauer uses is theme. The many themes in the story attract a diverse audience. Krakauer’s telling is world famous for being the truest, and most heart-felt account of Christopher McCandless’s life. The use of literary techniques including irony, characterization and theme help convey the authors