Technology In Into The Wild

Have you ever sat down and thought about what it would be like if you took the time to live out in the wild, with just yourself? Whether or not if you have, there’s no doubt that it would be difficult, especially if you’re used to living in a society that depends on technology almost daily. In Jon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild, we get to follow the story of Chris McCandless, and how he decided to live off the Alaskan wilderness. Chris wanted to know what it would be like to live off the land, refraining from almost any use of human-made objects or contact with other people. However, with attempting such a bold move, comes consequences. Chris was too naive and unprepared while in Alaska and therefore made a lot of mistakes, but one of his …show more content…
Upon entering the wild, the only things Chris brought were “a ten-pound bag of rice...cheap leather hiking boots [that] were neither waterproof nor well insulated…[and a rifle that] was only .22 caliber,” (Krakauer, 5) which was way too small for the game he was about to hunt for. According to folks who live in Alaska, the essential supplies for going into that territory included an ax, bug dope, snowshoes, and a compass. If Chris had just broughten some of the supplies that he needed, he may have survived a little longer than he did, maybe even live to see his life outside of Alaska. If Chris would’ve broughten more food, he wouldn’t have had to exert all his energy to go hunt, which may have been why he was so skinny after a while. For what was seen in his journal, he hunted almost all the time, everyday at least, and who knows how long he hunted for either each day. Some of his diary entries included his daily findings like “May 28: ‘Gourmet Duck!’ June 1: ‘5 Squirrel.’ June 2: ‘Porcupine, Ptarmigan, 4 Squirrel, Grey Bird.’ June 3: ‘Another Porcupine! 4 Squirrel, 2 Grey Bird, Ash Bird’” (Krakauer, 166) and so on. Some people might argue and say that bringing food would have gone against his “living fully off the wild” objective, which is true, but it wasn’t worth his entire life to risk starving in the wild. He should’ve brought some as an emergency supply when things got tough, but he …show more content…
The first time Chris made a major kill of a moose, he decided he would try to preserve the meat by “[butchering] the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes, [boiling] the organs into a stew, and then laboriously [excavating] a burrow in the face of the rocky stream bank directly below the bus, in which he tried to cure, by smoking, the immense slabs of purple flesh” (Krakauer, 166). Unfortunately, he failed to keep the meat fresh, as after a couple of days, maggots began to grow on the moose. He may have been able to live off the moose meat a little longer if he had just practiced beforehand or researched how to properly keep kill fresh. When he was living his last couple of days, he could’ve eaten some of the leftover meat and possibly lived a little longer, maybe even enough to see the hunters that would stop by the bus 19 days after his death. Also, before Chris went off to the Stampede Trail, he did go to a library and find a book about the region’s nearby plants (Tanaina Plantlore/Dena’ina K’et’una: An Ethnobotany of the Dena’ina Indians of Southcentral Alaska). However, I don’t believe he gave himself enough time to really research. He basically took the book and left, and whatever plants he came across, he would look up. I don’t recall him getting any other books