Reflection On Into The Wild

Out of all of the books I read this summer, Into The Wild was by far my favorite. To me, Chris McCandless’s story was both heartbreaking and motivating, and I admire his commitment to living on his own. I also enjoyed the format that Krakauer followed when writing the book. Above all, I believe Krakauer did justice to McCandless’s story, and proved that he was not an ill-prepared and incompetent teenager like some people believe. When Jon Krakauer wrote this book, he chose to study McCandless’s story and discover the truth to how he died and why he ran away from home in the first place. In order to do this, Krakauer researched others that suffered the same fate as McCandless, and shared their stories with the reader. Out of these stories, …show more content…
Chris McCandless and his father, Walt, did not get along. Chris was adventurous, outgoing, and imaginative. Walt, on the other hand, was organized, strict, and a perfectionist. The two had butt heads ever since Chris was a teenager. This relationship between the two could have been what drove Chris away in the first place. Once he found out that Walt had cheated on his mother, Billie, when he was a child, he immediately disowned him as his father. He never forgave Walt for what he did, and he hated him throughout his teenage years. It is not entirely Walt’s fault that Chris left, but if they had had a better relationship, I don’t think Chris would have left the way he did. Into The Wild is full of symbolism. There is one symbol in the book that ultimately led to McCandless’s death. One of these symbols is the moose that McCandless shot. The meat from the moose should have saved McCandless’s life, but he failed to preserve it correctly and therefore he could not eat it for very long. The moose stands for McCandless’s relationship to the wild. If he had been more prepared to enter the wilderness, he could have preserved the moose meat and saved his own