Book Report - Into the Wild

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York. Anchor Books: 1997.

I chose this book because I was running out of ideas for books to read and I remembered hearing about how good the book was and its subsequent movie. So, I bought it. I don't know what I would call this book. It's more like a documentary in book form than anything. Maybe even partially a biography. And some action adventure thrown in too. I didn't mean to start that last sentence with "and." The events in the book happened from 1990 to 1992.

The book starts at the end of the main character, Chris McCandless,' story. Hunters come across an abandoned bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness and they discover his dead body in a sleeping bag in the back of the bus. The book then flashes back and tells the story of the young man. Chris graduates from Emory University, stops communication with his family, and just hits the road. He does many things, like change his name, give $24,000 in savings to OXFAM charity, goes to a recreational area around Lake Mead in the middle of a desert where his car gets stuck in a flash flood and he burns the cash in his wallet, hitchhikes around and eventually gets to Carthage, Minnesota, where he befriends Wayne Westerberg and works for him. His journey does not stop there. When Westerberg gets in trouble with the law, Chris (now known as Alex) hitches around some more and ends up in Arizona, where he goes on a canoe trip down the Colorado River and ends up in Mexico. He gets lost when the river splits up, but with help from two duck hunters, he gets to the Gulf of California, paddles south, ditches the canoe, and then walks up north, back to America. He makes his way around the southwest and the west, meeting more people, even getting a job here and there, and working for Westerberg in Carthage again. He then starts to make his way up north, into Alaska where he plans to hike an old, yet arduous trail in the wilderness, called the Stampede Trail. He feeds himself with only the bag of rice he brings with him, berries and plants he finds, and a few, lean animals that he is able to kill with his .22 caliber rifle. When he finds the terrain too rough for him to hike to the coast as planned, he camps in an abandoned bus. He tries to leave, but his route is blocked by deep, speeding water created by the thawing snow. He stays at the bus for three months and gets overcome by extreme weakness he believes is from eating the seeds of Alaskan potatoes. The author also theorizes that the seeds contain a toxic alkaloid that causes weakness, and then starvation because it blocks nutrient metabolism to the body. Chris writes his last journal entry, crawls into his sleeping bag, and dies at age 24.

Chris was a quite intelligent but adventurous guy. He was a deep thinker who just wanted to create a new, free life for himself. I have a major respect for him because he knew how money and materialistic things were completely insignificant and he was actually willing enough to dispose of them. That is something very few people, especially young poeple, myself included, would be able to do.

I did enjoy the book because Chris' story was interesting and all, but I didn't really enjoy the actual writing. I expected an actual story, but reading the book is just like watching a documentary. The events are out of order and are brought forth in interviews of people who knew Chris. So, since it is out of chronological order, it could be confusing sometimes, and it just didn't really capture the emotion of an actual story like it could have. I know it's a true story but still.

I have never heard of this author before reading this so I probably won't read any of his books. However, Chris wrote in his journal about The Call of the Wild by Jack London and how good it is so I might read that sometime because other people have recommended it as well.