Douglas Bowen
Dr. Evans
ENG3U-3
1 May 2015
The Value of Risk-Taking: A Cross Analysis of Krakauer’s Into the Wild
When I was younger, I used to play a lot of soccer; I played midfielder. As the midfielder, I had to decide on whether to move onto defense or attack for possession of the ball when the opposing team had it. Each time I decided between the two, I was left open to the fact that my decision may have been the wrong one. Sometimes I would decide to attack in an attempt to gain possession of the ball. Sometimes I would succeed and gain possession back; Sometimes I would fail and the ball would get past me. I eventually grew out of playing soccer and moved onto other sports and hobbies. I occasionally did more dangerous things, like open-face rock climbing. When rock climbing, it always comes back to the same thing: deciding on if doing this thing is worth it or not. Is attempting to jump across worth it? Should I go back down? Or continue up? Each time you ask these things, you have to decide on what to do.
Be it rock climbing, playing soccer, or doing anything that involves some sort of decision making, each decision comes with a varying level of risk. In soccer, that risk is minimal and not very life threatening, but when rock climbing (maybe without a belayer), some decisions can come with more serious consequences; these can be anything like small injuries, or they can cause serious injuries or even death. Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild portrays Chris McCandless as someone who takes serious risks, but the benefits Krakauer finds in them are not as big as the risk in my opinion. Taking some risks are worth it as they can help you learn something about yourself, but others are not. In the book Into the Wild, Chris McCandless takes a big risk by going out into the wild unprepared with minimal supplies, but he thinks it is worth proving to himself that he can do it. “I can’t believe they’d try and buy me a car… think they have bought my respect.” (Pg. 21) as well as “At long last he was… raw throb of existence… complete severance from his life, he adopted a new name.” (Pg. 23) show that he wants to not be given things: He wants to truly earn his things and earn his place in the world, making a name for himself. He takes one too many risks and ends up dying simply because he didn’t take into account the flooding of a river or take an up-to-date map of the area. If he had, he would have most likely survived. Krakauer shows in his writing that he thinks Chris’s risk taking is very admirable and is something to be looked up at, portraying him as a hero. Quotes similar to “I won’t run into anything I can’t handle.” (Pg. 6) are placed throughout the book and give a sense of strength and courage to Chris. The truth about this, however, is that Chris was not a hero, rather someone who wanted to prove something while also giving himself as much of a disadvantage as possible, something that when death can be a result of said disadvantages, is just foolish. Krakauer argues that risks are always worth taking, all risks help one improve, but you can’t improve when you’re dead. Not all risks are worth taking.

When rock climbing in BC, though everyone had safety lines and helmets to make sure as little injury occurred as possible, there were still decisions to be made, still risks to climbing. Deciding between climbing the easy or hard wall was the very first decision to be made, and I decided on starting with the harder wall. This decision brought a bunch of new factors into play. The hard wall brought with it more decisions in climbing up the wall, which in turn allowed for more risks to be taken. Some of these risks were very small and others had more weight to them. In this instance, these risks all were small enough that they allowed for me to discover new things about myself; I learned that I could actually climb very well even with the rain pounding my helmet, seeping through my clothes, slicking the rocks, that I enjoyed rock climbing very much, even though I was also slightly afraid of heights. These decisions, because they were small and carried low risk to them, meant that I wouldn’t suffer much if I made a bad decision, but I would in return still learn a lot about myself. These types of risks are important to take because they help you further yourself in life with non-lasting injuries. The outcome outweighs the risk.
Taking risks are important to everyone; these risks allow one to learn more about what they can accomplish and what they cannot, what they enjoy, and what they hate. These risks are important, but not always worth it. For Chris, these risks involved proving to himself that he could be independent, cut off from his family and most of society. The sooner you take these risks, the more options you have to take even more risks and push yourself to your limit, to know your limits. Krakauer shows Chris as a “live on the edge” kind of person. The risks that Chris takes throughout Into the Wild are all very dangerous, but some of them are necessary for him to learn more about his abilities and limits. When he decides to abandon his car instead of getting help from the authorities, he adds so much time and hardship on his trip, but by doing this it helps show how determined he really is. It shows that he will push through whatever is thrown at him because he has already been through this. He ended up adding days of hitchhiking and living on barely any supplies, making ends meet doing quick jobs when he could. We also see this determination on Wayne’s farm. The other big risk that Chris took and learned from was simply going out into the wild. He learned that (aside from the few days before his death) he was able to survive out in the wild with nearly no supplies and barely any preparation. He was able to set a goal and complete it, as he made it 100 days as he had hoped. Had he not died due to the river keeping him trapped on the other side longer than expected, he would have known his true limits in the wild. Starting with small risks and building up to bigger risks allows one to gain confidence and learn their limits, allows them to analyze a situation and its benefits, but these risks should be taken slowly, from small to big, not starting with the big risks.
Throughout the book, Chris takes many risks and Krakauer portrays him taking these risks as sort of brave and adventurous for taking them, yet some of these risks do not deserve this kind of view. “In 1992, however… with his idiosyncratic logic… He simply got rid of the map.” (Pg. 174) has Krakauer explain what in plain text would be seen as completely idiotic, but with Krakauer’s telling of it portrays it as a brave and adventurous thing to do. Some of the risks that Chris took were what ended up killing him, the most useless risk of which was taking an un-updated map. Chris came to Alaska wanting, looking, for freedom: “He was looking for more adventure and freedom than todays society offered” (P. 174). Because of this society-based issue, Chris decided to take an older map so that he could explore these areas as if they had never been discovered. Not having this ideology towards adventure could have been the difference in him living or dying, which is why it was so foolish. The older map did not truly tell him anything important about himself, only added a bigger sense of adventure, along with it a much bigger and dangerous risk. By taking an updated map he would have been able to know that there was a crossing only a mile or two up stream, as well as that there was a “support” line of sorts for workers to cross the river. If he had taken an updated map, he may have been able to make it out without starving.

Things like rock climbing have lots of risks involved in them, be they small or large. Out in BC, climbing up a cliff face, decisions sometimes have to be made quickly. These decisions for the most part will not cause significant harm, which allows for us to learn from these risks we take, learn our limits, learn our boundaries. However, some of these risks can be more serious. Some of these risks can cause injuries that can have lasting effects. These kinds of risks are most often not worth attempting due to the consequences being worse than what insight one would learn from said risk. Krakauer describes in detail many risks that Chris McCandless takes; for the most part, these risks are small and help Chris learn more about his limits, but there is a fine line on risk taking that Krakauer does not place. The fact that Chris went in to the wild without sufficient equipment was a big risk, but he knew the local wildlife, so that he wouldn’t starve. However, the fact that he went in without an updated map was a foolish risk as he already planned on taking one, and by using an out of date map he simply put himself in unnecessary danger. Krakauer’s Into the Wild has many risks in it, but fails to draw the line between taking risks for personal insight and taking them unnecessarily.

Works Cited

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