...However, Chief questions if the protagonist is a traitor. McMurphy makes a rigged bet and Chief yells, “ ‘You’re always…winning things!’ ” (269). The men are uncertain if McMurphy is a selfish gambler or a helpful friend. He contrasts the protagonist, Chris McCandless, from Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, because Chris has opposing feelings about money: “ ‘…He didn’t seem interested in the money so much as the fact that he was good at making it. It was like a game, and the money was a way of keeping score’ ” (120-121). Unlike Chris, McMurphy enjoys gambling and finds money valuable. Nonetheless, this occurrence with Chief is a turning point for McMurphy because he realizes that the men deeply rely on him and he cannot lose their trust. He is not a traitor and adopts a new attitude as he finishes the mission he started. He decides to follow his superego, defined by McLeod, and tries to help the whole ward. The superego includes moral standards and civilized behavior, and Randle suppresses the urges of his former lifestyle...
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...In Chapter 8, Krakauer quotes Alaskans and their opinion on McCandless’s death. Many of the letters all have the common opinion that McCandless was another dumb and crazy young man who walked right into his death by fantasizing the Alaskan wild. This is the counter-argument to Krakauer’s rhetoric that he presents when he uses other “Jack London's” and compares their journey to McCandless’s. He argues that McCandless wasn’t mentally ill like John Waterman who walked into the wild of Mount Denali purposely unprepared in order to escape his life problems. McCandless also wasn’t naive and expecting a savior like Carl McCunn. The letters from the Alaskans add to the text because it shows the judgement that many had; these “Jack London’s” “could...
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...If someone told you the story of a man who left his life full of fortunes to become one with nature, what would your opinion of him be? Would you think that he’s brave? Reckless? Jon Krakauer in his non-fiction story, Into the Wild tells the journey of a young man by the name of Chris McCandless. Chris, after enduring a childhood where he was given everything in the world besides a loving household decided to leave everything behind, burn and donate all of his money and walk into the brisk wilderness of Alaska’s Denali area after hitchhiking around the continent a couple of years prior. Krakauer is impartial enough to let the reader form their own opinion of McCandless, even though his own opinions slip in at some points. Krakauer uses negative...
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...Most of the population relies on one or more people to get them through their life. Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s, Into the Wild, is different in this situation though. He believed he could conquer this idea and go into the wild on his own. After living 113 days in the taiga of Alaska, McCandless ended up failing his quest and died in August of 1992. Many characters on Chris McCandless’s hunt for independence were affected. The person that was most affected was his sister, Carine McCandless, who loved him very much even for his differences. Carine showed her love and understanding of her brother by saying, “I knew he was happy and doing what he wanted to do; I understood that it was important for him to see how independent he could...
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...There are more than one destination that can either be how you wanted it or be totally unexpected. You never know the outcome of a journey. Just like with Malcolm X’s “My First Conk,” Jeannette Walls’s “The Glass Castle,” and Jon Krakauer’s “Into The Wild.” All outcomes of a journey with a successful destination. The journey itself is more important than the destination because only the lessons you learn come from the journey such as curiosity, identity, and courage. Curiosity is one of the many lessons learned from a journey. In Malcolm X’s “My First Conk” its states, “This was self degradation: when I endured all of the pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair” (Malcolm X 2). The burning curiosity Malcolm...
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...Freedom of Isolation: The Final Frontier Alone. The aspect of being alone can be comforting to people, that they can escape from all the drama and misery that their life has held. In Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the novel displays Chris McCandless’s life as a journey from his younger years to his adult years until he passes away. It is a life of wanting freedom of solitude once events awaken his perspective on life. The author, Krakauer identifies his slow but prominent sliding into solitude. Krakauer develops this theme by explaining the characteristics of Chris and the many events that lead up to his venture in the wilderness. Krakauer establishes the theme of freedom of solitude by displaying Chris’s troubles with his family, settling and resettling, and his...
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...The Alaskan interior. A name Jim Gallien, picks up a young hitchhiker who calls himself Alex. Alex tell Gallien that he is from South Dakota and moved to Alaska to live off the land for a few months. Jim Gallien seems to think Alex moved to Alaska to live out a Jack London fantasy, but later changes his opinion about Alex, when he realizes that he Alex is quite educated after the two get more acquainted with each other. Gallien is still concerned about Alex, recognizing that he is severely under equipped. For example, “Alex’s backpack looked though as it weigh only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien an accomplished hunter and woodsman- as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the back country, especially so early in the spring (Krakauer12).” The stampede trail. This chapter describes the how hard it is to get to an old bus hunters use for during hunting season. Even though it is nearly impossible to reach, because of its dense shrubbery and swift, deep, river you have to cross; five couples still manage to arrive at the bus. A couple from Anchorage were the first to show up at the bus, and notice a vile stench. Once the parties read the letter, the called the state troopers. The body found belonged to a man named Christopher McCandless, nobody knew where he’d come from, because he didn’t have any identification. They figured he died from starvation. “At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighed at sixty-seven pounds (Krakauer)...
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...Into The Wild As we grow older we all want some type of indepence. We all will come to a point in life where we just want to isolate ourselves from our family, friends and eventually the world. This is totally normal. However, many people will do the most in order to fully get away, such as join the military or go to a university out of state. Well very rarely you’ll come across an individual who is willing to leave everything they have and set foot into the wild, as in Jon Krakauers book Into The Wild demonstrates.Life isn’t just about dying doing what you love, it’s the journey that you take in life that matters the most. The most commonly mistake is rushing and trying to do the most just like Chris McCandless who wanted to leave...
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...If you were to go on a long journey, how prepared would you be for it? In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Christopher Johnson McCandless, who later changed his name to “Alex Supertramp” and is also called “Alex McCandless,” heads West for two years and hitchhikes to Alaska; he was ill-prepared and is found dead due to starvation by a moose hunter after four months in the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley, Alaska. Chris McCandless was an arrogant, selfish, and ignorant person because he left his family and took very little supplies with him to his long journey. McCandless showed that he was selfish when he left his family. It was a selfish act that he did. He left the people that he loved with no warning. The only thing he told them was that he was “going to disappear for a while.” His family loved him so much that they were even confused when they found out he was dead. For example, “his bewildered family was left clutching the shards of a fierce and painful...
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...Justifying Krakauer’s Argument Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, received strong criticism from many about his work and its depiction of Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless, who journeyed across the United States and ultimately died in the Alaskan wilderness. As a part of his novel, Krakauer counters claims of Chris being “stupid, tragic and inconsiderate,” and instead paints him in a different light, displaying him as a young man with a profound moral compass seeking a higher truth. People such as Peter Christian had their two cents about McCandless; he reasoned from his own life experience that Chris was nothing special. Krakauer, on the other hand, writes to justify McCandless’s behavior, likewise, relating in his encounters...
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...Over the course of my final two years in high school, my opinion of English literature’s importance and relevance has changed due to the authenticity and complexities in literature. In my junior year, I was intrigued by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild a biographical novel which embodied themes of transcendentalism unusual to our world today. The divergent thinking expressed by the main character rejected social norms and chose self-enlightenment in the wilderness. Furthermore, I believe I grew most as a reader during my senior year, due to Trevor Noah’s satirical yet original read, Born a Crime. Those two works of literature really caused me to enjoy reading and writing about inquiries into global perspectives regarding life. In Jon Krakauer’s...
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...Within Into The Wild (1996), Jon Krakauer portrays a tone that shifts from formal and indifferent to sorrowful and admiring. Krakauer exhibits this change by remaining unbiased and factual in the beginning, but then becomes more personally connected to the subject (Chris McCandless) in the end. He does this in order to give a neutral, journalistic account of Chris’s death, before burrowing deeper into his life and analyzing the personal choices made that led to his demise. Krakauer directs this text primarily towards other travelers and outdoorsman, speaking to them at first like a journalist, but then providing his own voice and opinions as he examines the story. Early on in the book, Krakauer expresses a formal view on Chris McCandless’...
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...The author of the book, Jon Krakauer, has insisted since the writing of the book, that Chris McCandless did not simply die from starvation as the coroner’s findings indicated, but that he was the unfortunate victim of poisoning. It is not clear on what he bases that instance, but it has certainly made for a better story than him dying because he didn’t bring enough food. Over the years Jon Krakauer has put forward several theories for this poisoning, each being scientifically disproven. Recently he published an article in the New Yorker, giving his theory yet another try. You can read the article here. When I read the article myself, it raised a number of questions for me. Krakauer’s conclusions, as conclusive as they were, seemed based on almost no evidence, and the rest of the evidence outright contradicted his conclusions. As a summary, Krakauer believes McCandless was poisoned from eating the seeds of wild potato. He bases that on a note in the journal of Chris McCandless, stating that on day 94 he ate potato seeds, and he was too weak to walk as a result. He combines this note with research done by the Nazis in a concentration camp during WWII, showing that prolonged consumption of such potato seeds over a period of a few months can lead to a debilitating crippling, making it difficult and then eventually impossible for people to use their legs. Krakauer’s conclusions struck me as odd for several reasons. For starters, there is no mention of prolonged consumption...
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...In Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild, Krakauer uses rhetorical appeals and various devices to convince his audience that Chris McCandless’s journey, despite leading to his death, was not driven by insanity, but was driven by several rational...
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...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...
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