Into the Wild and Into Your Library

Into the Wild and Into your Library

By Jasper M

Into the Wild, written by mountaineer and adventurer Jon Krakauer, is a unique story that is a mix of a speculative biography and autobiography tells the true story of a young man out of college and trying to take on the Alaskan wilderness with only ten pounds of rice in April 1992. Jon Krakauer sees himself in the young man, Christopher McCandless, and incorporates his own narratives to connect to the man who died while trying to invent a new life for himself in the dangerous wilderness. It is an interesting combination of different types of writing, both telling the story of a man who gave up everything and how his story affects the lives of others.

Jon's writing captures the coldness and harshness of the reality of the tragic death. Krakauer paints McCandless as a heroic man who was only trying to discover himself and chose to do it with the unforgiving wilderness. Sometimes, however, Krakauer makes McCandless seem wise and person to be looked up to. While the philosophy of the young man's story is intriguing and his death his incredibly sad, it at the same time can be hard to see a man as a hero when he walked into Mt. McKinley forests with nothing to survive. It is not wise, and Krakauer idolizes immature and irresponsible choices. The writing is detailed and spends a lot of time focusing on the people around his death. If you are not into nonfiction or harsh, traveling stories than this may not be for you.

I recommend this book, however, to anybody who has ever questioned their being or society. The story itself is tragic but fascinating and gives a glimpse into a reality of people struggling enough with the world that they'd leave everything and disappear.

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, Anchor Books, 1996, 207 pages