Into the Wild
Author: Jon Krakauer
Rating: â 4/5
Date Read: 2013/04/14
Pages: 207
This book left me feeling conflicted. Itâs well written and thought-provoking: Krakauerâs fondness for the wild shines through each chapter. However, I havenât encountered a more unlikable protagonist than the doomed hiker, Chris McCandless, since I read [b:On the Road|70401|On the Road|Jack Kerouac|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1355224265s/70401.jpg|1701188]. Thereâs a parallel between the two books, with naive voyages across the country for some sort of unclear, grand purpose. McCandless reads as the type of person who cares more about long-dead authors than his own, loving parents. Krakauer repeatedly describes him as wildly intelligent, but the snatches of journal entires included in the book reveal a man who was rambling, incoherent, and unstable.
Towards the end of the book, Krakauer imbues in McCandless an individualistic false heroism: he seems to believe that McCandless could make the world a better place just by making himself a âbetterâ (or, at the least, self-sufficient) person. However, giving away all your money is easy when youâve always had enough, just like itâs easy to be brave when you consider yourself to be invincible. Krakauer is open about the fact that he identifies with McCandless, and this seems to have lead to a lack of objectivity in understanding just how reckless and naive McCandless was. At the end of the day, he wasnât a hero as much as a risk-taking young man who bit off way more than he could chew.
