Gender Socialization In Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

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Jon Krakauer’s depiction of masculinity in his novel Into the Wild contributed to the constant gender socialization happening to young men and women across the world. Boys are supposed to go out and explore and then get a job to provide for their families. Girls are supposed to stay at home and obey their parents until they are married then they must obey their husbands. Chis McCandless was a young man who was greatly affected by gender socialization and if he were a woman, Krakauer’s book would not exist for us to study its gender socialized aspects.
First off, Chris McCandless did not have a stable, safe home life due to his families incessant fighting. Krakauer only glimpses the McCandless’ many transgressions, but it is apparent that his …show more content…

What would happen if Mr. McCandless was Miss McCandless? Due to gender socialization women are discouraged from doing anything adventurous because it may cause harm to us. We are told constantly that we should never walk anywhere alone at night. We have all heard the saying that “women can’t even go to the bathroom by themselves”, what makes you think that it would be okay, or even plausible, for a women to do what McCandless did? We carry pepper spray, gifted to us by our precautious aunt, during out walk from are job to our car at closing time. Now think about the reaction I would get if I told my family I wanted go on a journey across the country by myself. They would give me a hard no. It’s not because they don’t trust me, they don’t trust the way in which women travelling by themselves are perceived; vulnerable, easy prey, helpless, etc. They would be worried about me constantly, almost to sickness. This is because we are all taught, through gender socialization, that women are feeble individuals that can be preyed upon at any moment. Even if a female did do exactly what Chris did throughout his journey, there would be more people coming up to her asking her what she was doing all alone and many more accounts of attempted rape. There would be no other women adventurer to compare her journey to like Krakauer did with McCandless. The disappearance of Miss McCandless would not have been all over national news. It would probably just be boiled down into a small piece about how a young girl died in Alaska due to a silly dispute with her family. It wouldn’t have turned into the well-known story that is discussed in classrooms across the country. There would be no story to write a classic masculine adventure book about. That’s what gender socialization does to the female gender, it erases us and our accomplishments, and even our

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