Almost all of humanity can relate to wanting to go out into the wilderness completely alone, leaving the toxic monotony and materialism of daily life and stepping into an environment where your passion determines life or death. For Christopher McCandless and Jon Krakauer, this was their reality for some time. While McCandless is now silenced in the snow of the Alaskan bush, Krakauer continues to explain what happened to McCandless, why they left society, and why the young people of today should follow their own dreams. Through the use of flowing description, well-held ethos, and simple sentence structure, Krakauer unravels the complexity of Christopher McCandless. Only by the use of attentive description could Krakauer illustrate the formational
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Not only were they close in age, but they were both “willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, [and] moody…figures of male authority aroused in [them] a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please” (Krakauer 134). These characteristics pushed both men over the ledge and into the wild - more specifically, Alaska. With such similarities, readers can deduce that the two men would prepare in a like way. From each man, readers may know one mistake he made that could have killed him. For Krakauer, “[his] ten-foot curtain rods seemed a poor defense against crevasses that were forty feet across and hundreds of feet deep” (Krakauer 139). For McCandless, it was the packaging of the potato seeds. Through this, readers can reasonably infer that the little preparation McCandless had was simple youthful misguidance, not indirect suicide. Krakauer admits that when he was at the same low as McCandless, he did not seek death. This similar flaw gives readers confidence that Krakauer knows the specifics of the case, understands the sensitivity, and wants to simply spread the truth. And if their preparation is not evidence enough, both men were on their ultimate adventure, with Krakauer explicitly saying that he “never had any doubt that climbing the Devil’s Thumb would transform [his] life” (Krakauer 135) and McCandless mentioning his presentation to the world upon his return to society to Wayne Westerberg and other friends he met on his adventures. Since readers have strong parallels between Krakauer and McCandless, readers can trust Krakauer’s argument that McCandless’ death was the product of being an under-prepared, adventurous youth. Through the use of ethos, Krakauer gives a reliable figure to parallel the life of McCandless’ off
Not only were they close in age, but they were both “willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, [and] moody…figures of male authority aroused in [them] a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please” (Krakauer 134). These characteristics pushed both men over the ledge and into the wild - more specifically, Alaska. With such similarities, readers can deduce that the two men would prepare in a like way. From each man, readers may know one mistake he made that could have killed him. For Krakauer, “[his] ten-foot curtain rods seemed a poor defense against crevasses that were forty feet across and hundreds of feet deep” (Krakauer 139). For McCandless, it was the packaging of the potato seeds. Through this, readers can reasonably infer that the little preparation McCandless had was simple youthful misguidance, not indirect suicide. Krakauer admits that when he was at the same low as McCandless, he did not seek death. This similar flaw gives readers confidence that Krakauer knows the specifics of the case, understands the sensitivity, and wants to simply spread the truth. And if their preparation is not evidence enough, both men were on their ultimate adventure, with Krakauer explicitly saying that he “never had any doubt that climbing the Devil’s Thumb would transform [his] life” (Krakauer 135) and McCandless mentioning his presentation to the world upon his return to society to Wayne Westerberg and other friends he met on his adventures. Since readers have strong parallels between Krakauer and McCandless, readers can trust Krakauer’s argument that McCandless’ death was the product of being an under-prepared, adventurous youth. Through the use of ethos, Krakauer gives a reliable figure to parallel the life of McCandless’ off