Into the Wild

A friend recommended this book to me, stating that it would make me want to take off "into the wild" myself. When I read the intro I thought "Yeah, right! This guy dies!" but my friend was right on. The book is very inspiring, and does make you realize we are capable of so much more than we think, and also crave an adventure-of-a-lifetime of your own...

Into the Wild

This true story is about a adventurous young man named Christopher McCandless who takes to the road after graduating university. He lives a minimalist lifestyle roaming the Western states leading up to his decision to venture to Alaska wilderness for the big-time adventure that ultimately leads to his untimely death.

The author, Jon Krakauer uses a collaboration of interviews with friends and families and McCandless' journal writing to give his interpretation of the events leading up to this young man's unfortunate death. Krakauer also provides backgrounds of other not-so fortunate adventurers who also have disappeared or died in an attempt to give the reader an understanding of what makes someone venture into wilderness to live off the land when most of us would think it is craziness.

Intrigued by the book jacket but by the end of the story felt totally bewildered for two reasons; by the way of Krakauer's writing style and because of McCandless actions. Preferably when reading non-fiction I like it to be told in sequence of events which I felt was not the case for this book. I felt that by the end of the book that much of the last years of this young man's life could not be documented properly because of his sometimes reclusive lifestyle hence why my feelings of bewilderment as we will never really understand what drives people to alienate themselves and in this case take the risks the can cost a life. It is thought provoking but in my opinion very dry at times because of the gaps the author needed to fill it to make it book.

3.5 stars. Into the Wild tells the story of Chris McCandless, a 24-year old whose body was found in the wilderness of Alaska in 1992. Chris had disappeared from his family's lives two years earlier. Krakauer tells McCandless's story, not only of the missing two years (pieced together by a journal, postcards, and interviews with people Chris had met during that time), as well as Chris's life story. Krakauer also compares Chris's life and adventures with other people who had similarly tried to live in the wild, and also with his own life.

Very good book. I thought Krakauer did a good job of trying to explain what would have possessed Chris to do what he did. I did find that I wasn't quite as interested in the stories of some of the other people Krakauer compared Chris to (though I found Krakauer's own story quite interesting), but that was only a very small part of the book.

This is Krakauer's book written before he achieved international success with his subsequent account of the Everest disaster, Into Thin Air. This is a very well written, tragic story of a young man who sets off on a nomadic adventure that cocts him his life. Christopher McCandless graduates from college and gives all his money away to live a simple life. He wanders the U.S. for two years and ends up trekking into the interior of Alaska where he eventually dies of starvation. This story is partly autobiographical as Krakauer strongly identifies with McCandless. Krakauer challenged mountains and McCandless the wild. McCandless loved books and I enjoyed exploring some of his favourite works, including Henry David Thoreau, Tolstoy and Pasternak, which are identified in this book. In the end, a great story of self-discovery.