Nature Of Nature In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

Improved Essays
Into the Wild, the intriguing novel by Jon Krakauer, deals with the tragically short life of Chris McCandless, who forsook the privileges of modern life to experience nature. He ventures into the Alaskan wilderness and consequently dies there. Chris was trying to discover the answer to his own soul in nature, but the wilderness is unfortunately cruel and it is not easy to accomplish this monumental task. People often attempt to find themselves in nature, but the wilderness is unforgiving and ferocious. Krakauer develops this theme through the use of real life examples in order to inform the reader about the dangerous and fascinating nature of the wilderness. Nature has a profound effect on man. The American wilderness holds a certain allure …show more content…
Waterman was by all accounts a successful outdoorsman. He climbed a formidable mountain and “…was hailed as a hero by the small fraternity of Fairbank climbers” (Krakauer 78). Waterman accomplished amazing feats through his connection to nature, but this was not enough. The answer to the riddle of the human soul could not be found and he was not at peace with himself. Krakauer writes, “Waterman discovered that instead of putting his demons to rest, success had merely agitated them” (Krakauer 78). No matter how great or amazing the wilderness may appear to be, it drives men to the brink of obsession and despair. Nature did not offer Waterman or Rosellini peace, it only gave them a desire for more until it overwhelmed …show more content…
Because of his obsession with nature, Chris accomplishes amazing feats much like Waterman. What separates McCandless from people like Gene Rosellini and John Waterman is the fact that Chris was not unsatisfied with his experiences, he took joy from them. Waterman’s experience in the wild only left him with a sense of emptiness and a desire for more. Likewise, Chris also wanted more, but he did not feel empty. The reality was quite the opposite, his life became fuller and better with each new experience, which caused him to seek out bigger and better adventures in the wild. While Chris is on these adventures, he writes, “It is the experiences, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive!” (Krakauer 37). The American wilderness causes Chris to appreciate his life, every single part of it. Krakauer writes, “The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences…” (Krakauer 58). In this context, the “new experiences” that this passage mentions are the ones that involve experiencing the wild. The author is saying that the joys of life can be found in nature, Chris found a euphoric happiness by living in and experiencing the wilderness. Even when he is dying he takes a photograph of himself where he is smiling

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Mccandless Journey

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In John Krakauer’s “Into the Wild,” Chris McCandless set out on an odyssey into the American wilderness, and eventually the Alaskan bush, in the 1990s. Throughout McCandless’s journey, he reflected on himself and on society through books. Much of this literature he read is centered towards the lifestyle that comes with living in the wild. In some of the books he read, McCandless highlighted passages he believed to be noteworthy. Most, if not all, of these passages reflected his life, specifically his adventure, in its many aspects.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The novel, Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, is a riveting, cautionary tale about the death of Chris McCandless, a young man who embarks on a journey to Alaska to seek the truth of happiness through the solitude of nature and free himself from the constraints of society. No doubt, the ongoing theme throughout Krakauer’s novel is the dysfunctional father-son relationship between Chris and his dad. In fact, McCandless died before he had the chance to grow out of his anger. Into the Wild examines the fatal expedition of Chris McCandless as he breaks all ties from society and challenges his ability to survive in the wilderness. Through the use of primary sources, situational irony, and syntax, Krakauer thoroughly captures the compelling tragedy of Chris McCandless.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chris was raised in a somewhat privileged household, his parents were very smart people who worked all the time. For the most part, whatever Chris wanted he usually got it, although he did not get a lot of attention from his parents and got into fights with them from time to time. McCandless eventually got tired of his life, with his parents fighting, his father’s obsession for Chris to become the man in his father 's eyes rather than the man Chris wants to be. This is how his story begins on his adventure to Alaska. McCandless embarked into this journey only dependent on himself with nobody else in the picture.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Almost all of humanity can relate to wanting to go out into the wilderness completely alone, leaving the toxic monotony and materialism of daily life and stepping into an environment where your passion determines life or death. For Christopher McCandless and Jon Krakauer, this was their reality for some time. While McCandless is now silenced in the snow of the Alaskan bush, Krakauer continues to explain what happened to McCandless, why they left society, and why the young people of today should follow their own dreams. Through the use of flowing description, well-held ethos, and simple sentence structure, Krakauer unravels the complexity of Christopher McCandless. Only by the use of attentive description could Krakauer illustrate the formational…

    • 818 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the story Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the protagonist Chris McCandless can relate to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s perspective in that nature is the key to success, and that nature is the heart of human life. Nature is a powerful, and flawless, everlasting beauty. In the eyes of Chris McCandless, transcendentalism is how you perceive your surroundings. This is shown by, “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun”(Krakauer 57).…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a biography. A young man named Christopher Johnson McCandless takes a journey to Alaska to get away from the society and people in his life, like his family. Chris goes to Alaska with no money and the bare necessities to survive in the wilderness. Chris dies because he ended up needing the items he did not have, but Chris did and experienced a lot before he died. Chris makes an identity, which is being stubborn, ungrateful, and only depends on himself and that changes his life and his choices, Chris built his identity by his actions, interest, and values and beliefs.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He believed that adventure was a part of one 's spirit, and the exciting feeling it brought was a necessity. “The very basic core of a man 's living spirit is his passion for adventure” (Krakauer 57). Chris understood his desire for adventure, and he actively sought after it. His seeking for adventure also tied in with his need for freedom, where his sense of adventure caused him to desire freedom. The longing adventure was in his blood, even if he was scrounging for food or scaling a national park, he loved the feeling of it.…

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “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”…

    • 729 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The world puts pressure on individuals by setting high societal standards one must achieve in order to be considered successful in life. Family also plays a significant role in one’s life, as parents expect their children to succeed and follow specific paths in life. However, young adults often feel burdened by the need of having to meet the expectations of both family and society; leading many individuals to develop high levels of stress. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild both Chris McCandless and Jon Krakauer must deal with the high expectations of their father, eventually coming to view life on the road as a way to relieve their burdens. Chris McCandless sets off to Alaska in hopes to start a new life, while Jon Krakauer climbs the mountain,…

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Isolation: The Struggle to Find One’s Self In Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer investigates a young man’s struggle between isolation and forgiveness. This book shows the compelling, incredible adventure of Chris Mccandless, who leaves his home, family and money to disconnect himself from society and live the life he has always wanted.…

    • 1369 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “A man who has given away a small fortune, forsaken a loving family, abandoned his car, watch, and map, and burned the last of his money before traipsing off into the wilderness” (71). The national best selling book, “Into the Wild” written by Jon Krakauer tells the story about a man name Chris McCandless. The story takes place in 1990’s and tells the adventures of the a man who changes his name to Alex Supertramp. The story tells the readers of the book:all the different people he met on his journey, where he want and how he died. As the author writees about Chris’s life and his connections with the story he includes many different types of writting styles including rhetoricstragides.…

    • 1046 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In countless instances, Chris expressed his distaste for the conformity of a society, as he saw with his own family, in which one’s life is a routine that consists of waking up, going to work, coming home to family, going to sleep, and repeating it for the rest of one’s life. McCandless set out into the world after college not to appreciate nature specifically, but the experiences of the world, as he described, “’It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found.’” (27) Chris strived for a daily sense of adventure, an escape from the limitations of community, as Andy, a high school friend of McCandless, explained, “[Chris] was born into the wrong century. He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today’s society gives people.” (119) Another aspect that was unpractical of Chris, that led to his unfortunate death in Alaska, was his seclusion and his desire to be alone.…

    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Analysis Of Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited

    He determined that he would travel to Alaska, get further away from it all, and face nature at its finest. He traveled exceptionally light. He didn?t take much, a parka, a small rifle, some boots, a few clothes, a ten pound bag of rice, books, and little else. ? The heaviest item in McCandless?s half-full backpack was his library: nine or ten paperbound books.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 1 Works Cited
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chris, possessing a wild temperament, gradually came back into societal structure, after his adventures from the wild. Furthermore, having been a great athlete and student, especially excelling in the art of history, Chris chose to essentially waste away his talents in these fields and go a completely different route, and in his own words from the film Into the Wild, “You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is no secret that the idea of wilderness grips every American citizen. Some authors including, William Cronon, have gone to great lengths to explain American infatuation with the wild. Cronon in his article The Trouble with Wilderness, Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, presents the sublime nature of wilderness as one of the reasons Americans imagine nature. I believe both I, Krakauer and Chris McCandless disagree with William’s Cronon’s assessment of the American psyche. Rather than seeing the wilderness as, “rare places on earth where one had more chance than elsewhere to glimpse the face of God” (Cronon), Krakauer, McCandless and most Americans believe wilderness is a place to find yourself.…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays