Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. New York: Villard Books, 1996. CT 9971 .M35 K73 1996 Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides to the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild. Alex. --Postcard to a friend from McCandless, before his disappearance. Courageous traveler or unprepared fool? This remarkable book chronicles the true story of 24-year-old Christopher McCandless’s journey, without compass or map, into the Alaskan wilderness in 1992, and his subsequent demise through starvation. Using a combination of interviews with family and friends, letters, postcards and journal entries from McCandless, as well as recollections from his own thrill-seeking adolescent wanderings, journalist Jon Krakauer sets out to answer the many questions surrounding both McCandless’s adventure and death in this meticulously researched and detailed book, which has recently been made into a synonymously-titled, critically acclaimed movie directed by Sean Penn and starring unknown actor Emile Hirsch. McCandless, a highly intelligent and academically successful young man who grew up in the affluent suburbs of Washington D.C., had, by all accounts, a normal upbringing with loving and supportive parents. However, the boy’s increasing distaste for social injustice and political corruption, his parent’s staid world and the pressures upon him to succeed, eventually collided with his yearning for freedom and his belief in the restorative effect of nature on man’s soul. These internal clashes led McCandless, in 1990, to renounce his parents, give away to charity his savings of $25,000, burn the cash in his wallet, change his name to Alex, and effectively drop out of civilized society. He then spent almost two years on the road, hitchhiking, sleeping rough and travelling through some of America’s last great tracts of wilderness – even sneaking across the Mexican border to canoe to the Gulf of California. But his dream was always to spend several months alone in the Mt. McKinley region of Alaska, living off the land in the tradition of his literary heroes Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, and Jack London. It was here, inside a derelict bus, that his badly decomposed body was discovered by hikers in August 1992. Krakauer initially wrote an article on the boy’s death for “Outside” magazine, which resulted in more reader correspondence than any other story in the magazine’s history. The letters were sharply divided in opinion between those who believed McCandless was an ill-prepared, naïve idiot, selfish to the extreme for not having left word with anyone, especially his family, to those who admired the boy for his bravery, idealism and strength of will, as well as his ability to shrug off the confines and expectations of the modern world. Krakauer decided to find out more about McCandless’s background, his psyche and state of mind. But the more research he did, the more intrigued he became by McCandless, unnerved by the way he died and the perceived similarities in their lives. “I was haunted by the particulars of the boy’s starvation,” Krakauer writes, “and by vague, unsettling parallels in his life and those in my own. Unwilling to let McCandless go, I spent more than a year retracing the convoluted path that led to his death in the Alaska taiga, chasing down details of his peregrinations with an interest that bordered on obsession.” The results are mesmerizing. Krakauer skillfully weaves McCandless’s own voice with those of his sister Carine and parents Walt and Billie into this narrative, as well as the many individuals whom the boy encountered on his travels, who were, without exception, struck by his passion, intensity, and kindness.
Krakauer heard repeatedly during his investigations that McCandless was different and special, sentiments that are reinforced by the lasting impact McCandless had on total strangers. Their words, interspersed throughout the story, bring McCandless to life. “He was a dandy kid…real courteous,”… “There was something fascinating about him…I can’t get him out of my mind,”… “He seemed extremely intelligent…God, he was a smart kid…I was sad to be leaving him.” At the same time, these friendships which sprung up across the country, as far afield as South Dakota, California, and Alaska, emphasize the tragedy and pointlessness of McCandless’s death, and the pain he caused his family. “I begged and pleaded with him to call his parents,” said truck driver Gaylord Stuckley, who gave McCandless one of his last rides. “I can’t imagine anything worse than having a son out there and not knowing where he’s at for years and years, not knowing whether he’s living or dead.” Whether this lack of communication on McCandless’s part was supreme arrogance, self-confidence, or simply a desire, typical of many youngsters starting out in the world, to assert his independence from his parents and prove to them – and himself – that he could survive alone, the reader will never know. What is clear from McCandless’s journal extracts, discovered at the scene of his death, are the elation and inspiration he finds from being utterly absorbed in the natural environment; “Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom…no longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.” But with this joy comes the growing realization that to be happy in any meaningful way, McCandless must return to the world he’s left behind, and share his life with others. “Happiness only real when shared,” he writes. There is no doubt from the scrawled words found by his body in the broken-down bus that McCandless intended to leave. “Patch Jeans, Shave!, Organize pack,” he wrote. The reader’s knowledge throughout the book that McCandless will never see his family or fellow travelers again adds tremendous poignancy to this story, and is testament to Krakauer’s skill as a writer. It reminds us of the fragility of human existence and the sometimes terrifying power of nature, as encapsulated by McCandless’s last note begging for help. “S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me.” Yet the book is also testimony to McCandless’s life as a real adventurer, seeker of truth and lover of the great outdoors. It will appeal to all those who seek refuge and reincarnation in the wilderness, and who experience the reawakening that these journeys into the wild bring. “I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun,” McCandless wrote, in the summer of 1992, just weeks before his death. Ana Davis