Into The Wild Chris Mccandless Journey

Chris McCandless longed for independence and freedom from the life he was living and embarks on the adventure of a lifetime. Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild, begins the book by giving the reader a narration of his journey ,then shortly after changes into a mystery by telling the reader of a dead body found in the bus. The readers can infer that the body found is Chris, giving the reader a feeling that he was crazy for making this venture into the wild and doubt his mental state. Krakauer, then tells the reader of Everett Ruess, a young man who did the same journey and died, giving the reader his view on Chris that he didn’t go out into the wild, because he was crazy but it was more for his own good as a person. The author would continue
Since the author decided not to tell the story in chronological order, he is able to give the reader more in depth knowledge about the decision Chris made and other people similar to him, with similar thought process. In Chapter 9, Krakauer shifts the book in a new direction of another young man by the name of Everett Ruess. Ruess was a 20 year old boy, who traveled to a place known as Davis Gulch. Ruess and McCandless both had their opportunity to go to an Ivy league school, for both that wasn’t their desire to go to school, get and education, and shortly after find a well paying job. They wanted to go out into the world on their own and see what life has in store for them. “He dropped out after a single semester (UCLA), to his father’s lasting dismay.”(90) Krakauer shows the first similarity between the boys and how they both had fathers who wanted them to live by their fathers standards and do what they chose for them. After both failed to follow direction from their parents they received nothing but shame. This was a turning point for them and would be the start of their new beginning. Another similarity they both had was at the end of their journey they faced a life or death situation and they made a small mistake costing them their lives. Suffering from starvation, Ruess had a case of poison ivy and wrote to his friend Bill Jacobs “ For two days i couldn’t tell whether I was dead or alive…” (93) McCandless using his book about plants, looked up a berry plant and found it was edible shortly after eating the berries he came to find out that it was poisonous and would eventually kill him. Adopting new names for themselves that described how they see themselves. For Ruess, the name “Nemo- Latin for nobody…”, he wrote this name last found into sandstone