Adam Sexton - CliffsNotes on Krakauers Into the Wild

Copyright 2013 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
All rights reserved

www.hmhbooks.com
cliffsnotes.com

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information sotrage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

Trademarks: CliffsNotes, the CliffsNotes logo, Cliffs, cliffsnotes.com, and all related trademarks, logos, and trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Houghton is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

eISBN 978-0-544-18226-4
v1.0713

Publishers Acknowledgments

Editorial

Project Editor: Kristi Hart

Acquisitions Editor: Greg Tubach

Composition

Proofreader: Melanie Hoffman

Wiley Publishing, Inc. Composition Services

Into the Wild retraces the journey of the real-life Christopher McCandless, an idealistic young man who, after graduating from a prestigious Eastern college, donates his savings to charity and eventually abandons his car to explore the American West (walking, hitchhiking, canoeing, and hopping rides on freight trains) and then the Alaskan wilderness. Eventually McCandless dies of starvation inside an abandoned bus not far from Mt. McKinley. More than geographical, though, McCandlesss quest is personal, as he tests his ability to survive alone in a series of hostile environments. Into the Wild began as an article in Outside magazine, was expanded by author Jon Krakauer into a nonfiction book, and eventually was made into a movie directed by Sean Penn.

WRITTEN BY: Jon Krakauer

FIRST PUBLISHED: 1996 by Villard

TYPE OF WORK: nonfiction

GENRES: adventure, New Journalism

SETTING: suburbs of Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; western United States; Baja, California (Mexico); western Canada; Alaska

MAIN CHARACTERS: Christopher Johnson McCandless (a.k.a. Alexander Supertramp or Alex), Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob, Ronald Franz, Jim Gallien, Jon Krakauer, Billie McCandless, Carine McCandless, Walt McCandless, Wayne Westerberg

MAJOR THEMATIC TOPICS: the American West; fathers and sons; materialism; survival in the wilderness; young manhood

MOTIFS: death; climbing; documents; friendship; hubris; hunting; literature; money; nature; travel; wilderness

MAJOR SYMBOLS: deserts; the Magic Bus; moose; mountains; rivers; yellow Datsun

The three most important aspects of Into the Wild:

• Into the Wild is a kind of mystery story, albeit a true one. The books second chapter introduces a dead body, that of Christopher McCandless, and the remainder of Into the Wild investigates not only how McCandless died but why. That is, it attempts to answer the question, Why would a recent college graduate from an affluent family renounce that family and his friends and set off alone into the wilderness? The books author, Jon Krakauer, attempts to solve the mystery by following McCandlesss route from Atlanta, where he attended college, to the abandoned bus near Mt. McKinley where he died, introducing the reader to many of the people he encountered along the way.
• Because McCandless is no longer alive to tell his own story, the author must rely on the testimony of people who met the young man as well as the documents McCandless left behind: his journal, notations he made in the books he read, graffiti he carved inside the abandoned bus he camped in, and photographs he took of himselfeven government forms filled out by the young man. These words and images, as well as quotations from literature provided by the author and maps that trace McCandlesss odyssey, are essential to the tale that Krakauer tells.
• The book encourages the reader to evaluate Christopher McCandless and his actions: Was he a hero or a fool? Was he brave or stupidor just immature? Some even suggest that McCandless was mentally ill. Author Jon Krakauer clearly identifies with his protagonist, revealing toward the end of the book that as a young man, Krakauer too attempted a journey into the wilderness that could be interpreted as foolhardy. (Like McCandless, Krakauer also clashed with his father.) But the author refrains from explicitly judging McCandless, leaving that up to his readers.

Personal Background

Son of a doctor and amateur mountaineer, Jon Krakauer was born on April 12, 1954, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and grew up in Oregon, where he began mountain-climbing at eight years old. After graduating from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1976, Krakauer worked as a carpenter and a commercial fisherman in Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska, devoting most of his free time to climbing. In 1977 he pioneered a new route up the Devils Thumb in southeast Alaska, and in 1996 he reached the top of Mt. Everest, though four of his five teammates died on the descent down the mountainan experience Krakauer would write about for Outside magazine and in his book Into Thin Air.

Career Highlights

Jon Krakauer is a journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Outside, Architectural Digest, and other periodicals. Some of Krakauers essays and articles on mountain-climbing were collected in his first book, Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, published in 1990. His next book, Into the Wild (1996), became a bestseller and was adapted in 2007 as a feature film directed by Sean Penn.

Into Thin Air (1997), Krakauers third book, investigates the commercialization of the worlds highest mountain, Everest. It reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 24 languages. It also was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle award and the Pulitzer Prize and was named Book of the Year by Time magazine.

His other books include Under the Banner of Heaven (2003), about the Mormon church, which inspired the 2006 documentary