Rhetorical Analysis Into The Wild

A well known climber and author, Jon Krakauer, the author of Into The Wild, implies in chapter eight that Chris isn’t the unique individual people make him out to be. Krakauer tells the stories of several young men going out into the wild much like Chris McCandless. He develops this idea by using rhetorical devices such as the epigraphs that open the chapter which serve to foreshadow the chapter’s content as well as Chris’s later demise. Krakauer also draws analogies between other young men and McCandless to shed light on why so many young men are enticed into the wild.

The chapter starts out with two epigraphs. The first epigraph describes that smart and creative people push themselves into the extremes that ultimately results in death. This epigraph foreshadows the ending of the individuals in this passage as well as Chris. The second epigraph outlines the difference between going out into the woods and going out into the Alaskan woods. Both epigraphs form a cause for why these individuals went to Alaska. All of the men were intelligent and they wouldn’t settle for “Michigan (or Faulkner’s Big …show more content…
In the chapter’s beginning, he shares the Alaskan locals’ opinions. Many mark Chris as one more “kook” (71) but “McCandless ended up dead, with the story of his dumbassedness splashed across the media” (71). Krakauer’s inclusion of the opinions makes the tone of the chapter serious yet scrutinizing. The tone extends insight into why Chris left and was compelled to Alaska. But at the end of the chapter Krakauer sets Chris apart from the others. “McCandless was something else--although precisely what is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps” (85). Even with the multiple comparisons Chris is different and the reader is left to decide whether he is unique or if he is “just another case of underprepared, overconfident men bumbling around out there”