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Chapter 1 Presentation • The chapter begins with a postcard written by McCandless, addressed to Wayne Westerberg in Carthage, South Dakota. McCandless, who signs the postcard "Alex," speaks of his regard for Westerberg and mentions the possibility that he may not return alive from his wilderness adventure in Alaska.
Chapter 1 sets the precedent, which the author will follow in each subsequent chapter, of opening the chapters with quotations. These opening quotations are carefully selected to set the tone and mood for the contents of each new chapter. In some cases, the author's chapter conclusion is summed up by the beginning quotation.
Summary Continued • Jim Gallien first encounters “Alex” four miles outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, hitchhiking by the side of the road. Despite the rifle the young hitchhiker carries, Gallien decides to offer him a ride. • Alex tells him of his plans to hike the Stampede Trail. • Gallien said he appeared to be ill prepared with old hiking boots, only a .22 caliber rifle, and a bag of rice; he offers to buy him some proper supplies but Alex refuses. • Gallien also comments that he thinks Alex’s (McCandless) plan in “foolhardy”
Summary Continued • Gallien gives Alex his boots and some food he had packed for his lunch • He takes a picture of Alex as he sets off on the snow-covered trail; the date was Tuesday, April 28th, 1992. • Gallien thought of letting officials know about Alex but decided against it; he assumed Alex would get hungry soon enough and turn around.
Characters • Wayne Westerberg- McCandless writes a post card to him as he prepares to “walk into the wild”. • Jim Gallien- picks up McCandless as he is hitchhiking to the trailhead. He is a union electrician on his way to Anchorage. He tries to help McCandless without much success. • Alex- aka Chris McCandless begins his adventure on the Stampede Trail
Christopher Johnson McCandless • Chris McCandless is the subject of Jon Krakauer's non-fiction book, Into the Wild. A writer and wilderness enthusiast, Krakauer writes a brief story for Outside magazine when Chris's body is discovered in the Alaskan wilderness.
Chris's story stays with Krakauer, inspiring him to further research the young man in a quest to understand what went awry. Krakauer's interest in Chris is sparked by certain similarities between them.
Krakauer believes that his own youthful escapades might easily have ended fatally, and he writes Into the Wild in an attempt to defend Chris from his critics. Many people have responded to Chris's death with anger, seeing Chris as a foolhardy young man who threw away every advantage he was given in life.
Themes • Man in Nature • Man's role in Nature is the predominant theme of Into the Wild. The subject of the book, Chris McCandless, believes that man's ultimate joy can only be found in communion with nature. • McCandless is an avid reader, and his favorite authors are quoted frequently to support McCandless's romantic view of natural communion. Jack London and Henry David Thoreau are two of McCandless's favorite authors, and their immense respect for nature influences the impressionable young man.
However, nature is a fickle beast, turning from friendly ally to cruel enemy in the blink of an eye. McCandless is not insensible to this fact. His personal experience and the literary accounts he enjoys reading both teach him that nature's laws do not change for any man. • He captures the ideals of the Transcendentalists when he says “Hell no...How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. &^*)( their stupid rules” (6).
Language/Literary Qualities • Documentary biographical writing is not celebrated for its prime literariness. Into the Wild, however, features many of the narrative qualities that mark the best novels. Krakauer's deft interweaving of diverse personalities and locations lend his work a crisp credibility and resonance, while enabling the author to shape a sustained drama from the facts and figures that comprise the documentary materials at hand. His generous and candid descriptions of his varied interviewees eschew cliches and add color and texture to this book.
Krakauer has made Into the Wild a much more complicated book by including many intertexts in the form of thoughtfully placed epigraphs and excerpts from the books that influenced Chris, as well as some anecdotal stories about other young adventurers whose attraction to nature also proved fatal.
