One of the many reasons Jon Krakauer wrote Into the Wild was because of his emotional connection with Chris McCandless through the comparison of experience and personality. Despite the fact the two individuals never met, it was obvious to the author that McCandless shared much of the same childhood. Krakauer used the strategy of publicly addressing his relationship with his own father to prove that he had the credentials to explain Walt McCandless’s impending future with his son. Throughout the novel, the detrimental toll both elders had on their respective children is indisputable. Krakauer described his as baffling and infuriating (148), matching the description of Walt while simultaneously adding insight as to why it was a healthy …show more content…
Particular instances of foreshadowing and imagery were used to emote a similar sense of grief that acquaintances and family members felt when they lost contact with the secretive adventurer. McCandless’s last words in a postcard read, “I now walk into the wild” (69) and symbolized the rarity of him ever returning. Krakauer showcased stealth when providing a look into the future early in the writing, providing the remorse a reader would feel when they too realized Chris McCandless had become a lost cause, someone who would no longer walk the earth. While the author didn’t often explain the internal thoughts of the hitchhiker (due to the fact that he couldn’t, seeing as McCandless had been discovered deceased and unable to explain his sentiments in anything other than underlined quotes and few journal entries), the novel portrayed a scenario in which the young man had begun to cry. The action had frightened those closest to him, and seeing as he wasn’t planning on being gone forever, they were filled with the dreadful feeling that they would never see Chris again (68). A scene that contained an abundance of affliction and misery naturally appealed to the audience, regardless if they were angered by Chris’s recklessness or not, because for that moment in time, they empathized with those who lost