Analysis of Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild

Throughout the novel, Christopher McCandless’s character changed over time. Up to McCandless’s death, he wanted to live with the wild and to be away from civilization as far as possible. He changes his mind when he writes “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED” (189). His purpose of living in the wild is to live with freedom and do whatever he wishes to do. However, he realizes he was a “refuge in nature” (189) and intended to abandon his solitary life and rejoin the human community. It is assumed that McCandless died a preventable death because of his unpreparedness, but it is now undeniable that his adversity is what caused his mortality. “…McCandless simple had the misfortune to eat moldy seeds. An innocent mistake, it was nevertheless sufficient to end his life” (194). Had he not eaten the moldy seeds, he would have remained alive to tell the tale.

Jon Krakauer’s unintentional effects of propaganda techniques can persuade that Christopher Johnson McCandless was reckless and ignorant in several ways throughout this whole chapter. Krakauer inadvertently showed that McCandless was reckless by a quote that McCandless says, “How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. F*ck their stupid rules” (6). Little does McCandless know, his choices will negatively affect him resulting in his death. McCandless was very careless when it came to being prepared. “His rifle was only .22 caliber; a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass” (5). “In most places, there aren’t a lot of animals to hunt. Livin’ in the bush isn’t no picnic” (5). Christopher McCandless was ig...

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... flood, is nevertheless unthinkable” (173). The word ‘thundering’ was used to captivate the sudden and dangerous circumstances of the flooding river. “I can hear rocks the size of bowling balls grinding along the bottom, rolled downstream by the powerful current” (173). Krakauer used a metaphor to analogize the size of the rocks. His analogy was used to describe how strong the river was, to push bowling ball sized rocks downstream. “A few inches away sits a skull the size of a watermelon, think ivory fangs jutting from its bleached maxillae” (179). The analogy here was used to compare the bear’s skull that was found in the bus to the size of a watermelon. The comparison of the two tells how massive the bear must have been and generates fear of that bear before it was killed.

Work Cited

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1997. Print.