Compare And Contrast Peter Stark And Jon Krakauer

Two amazing authors with very different writing styles have written about the wilderness and its many unknowns. One of the authors, Jon Krakauer, is the writer of the article, Death of an Innocent, which is a non-fictional piece about an adventurous boy who met his doom in the Bush of Alaska. The other author is Peter Stark, the writer of Thirst, a story about an abandoned man in the Sahara desert stricken with dehydration. Although they both wrote about the outdoors, their writing style is what made them so different. Two big differences in their work was the use of non fiction in the stories and how the point of view they used influenced the way the stories were told. When compared, Stark’s writing was more impactful than Krakouer due to …show more content…
Krakauer's writing complete nonfiction and includes a vast amount of real life quotes from the subject, Christopher Mccandless, and quotes from those who met Chris throughout his journey. A quote of Chris’s used in the story was this line written on a blank page of a book found with his remains, “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!’”. The use of quotes throughout the writing helped to immerse the reader into the text by making the reader see how Chris lived his life and the emotions he felt in his own words. Stark’s use of non-fiction was often found in small facts about the body and the dessert that the main character travels through. One fact Stark brought up relating to water loss and its effects on the body was, “The body can tolerate with only moderate problems a deficit of 3 to 4 percent of body weight, though one may suffer a powerful thirst, which kicks in at about a 0.8 percent deficit, or about a pint”. This use of non-fiction helped the reader grasp an understanding of what the desert man was in the process of enduring and how he was in serious danger should he not find water quickly. Both writers use of non-fiction helped support the main subject of the stories and improved the impact of the writing on the …show more content…
Krakauer based his whole non-fiction article on the facts he found from the investigation of Chris McCandless death and from things he experienced during his own adventure into the alaskan wilderness. Krakauer reflects a lot on what McCandless wrote in his journal while in the Bush and is often left with blank pieces to the story like when Chris realized he wouldn’t be able to cross back over the river and Krakauer stated, “It’s impossible to know what was going through his mind at that point, believing that his escape had been cut off, for his journal betrays nothing”. This quote from the text truly portrays how Krakauer kept his writing completely non-fiction, using only what he found from sources of the investigation and those who knew the boy. Stark on the other hand puts a twist on nonfiction writing by using it in a way that is rarely seen. Stark's story, Thirst, is a fictional piece which is based on no real life experience, however, he does include non-fictional facts like, “Death occurs somewhere in the range of 15 - 25 percent deficit”. Starks use of non-fiction is extremely different from Krakauer who purely wrote non-fiction, Whereas, Stark seems to have made it possible to intertwine fiction and nonfiction in his work by incorporating scientific facts about the body and water loss as it relates to his fictional desert