Into the Wild Analysis

Christopher Johnson McCandless walked alone into the Alaskan wilderness with very little equipment and food after traveling to various parts of North America during the course of two years. Regardless of living on his own with not many things for a couple of years, Chris died alone in a bus on the Stampede Trail in Alaska. Author Jon Krakauer wrote a 9,000 word article titled “Death of an Innocent” for the 1993 issue of the magazine Outside. Into the Wild is simply an extension of that article which explains what provoked Chris into living such a life, who he was, and how he died. The author proves to the reader that Chris was an intelligent man by explaining his research about edible plants and his ambition which builds up Chris’s trust by showing that Chris keeps his promises and is very determined. Krakauer also creates sympathy for Chris by including the critical letters that Krakauer receives. Finally, the author fabricates empathy for Chris’s parents by displaying the fact that Chris is unable to forgive his parents faults but can forgive everyone else’s while Krakauer explains that Chris’s mother put a first aid kit with a note by the bus in which Chris had died. Chris McCandless was not a mentally challenged man; for he is an alumnus of Emory University in Atlanta. Chris proves that he is a smart and self-sufficient man in the book by researching about edible plants and moreover, the way that he expresses his ambition to go to Alaska. After being dropped off by a university in Alaska, Chris headed to the campus’s bookstore where he found himself “a scholarly, exhaustively researched field guide to the region’s edible plants” and even spent two days and three nights mentally preparing himself. Chris realizes that he simply cannot survive on the animals that he kills since it is somewhat hard to shoot animals. Chris’s research of edible plants proves that he is able to survive on the wild because he takes some precaution instead of taking the risk