Into the Wild Reader Response

Into the Wild Reader Response
Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer, is a memoir about how living in the wilderness and how Chris McCandless lived nearly two years in the wild. Throughout the novel, Krakauer relates Chris’ adventures to his own experience in mountain climbing and living on his own. This is not your typical memoir where the author tells a story about their lives. Jon Krakauer is not the main character; however he tells a story of this boy who leaves his well-developed family for no apparent reason. But not only does he tell Chris’ story, he tells his own by fusing them altogether.

The story starts out and it is telling about all these people and how they relate to Chris McCandless, but it is extremely hard to tell who is telling the story. Because it’s a memoir, the reader knows that the author is, but it is hard to see how the main character and the author are related. Later on in the novel, the reader figures out that the author and main character are related through their similar relationships with their fathers, attraction to outdoors, and the similar things they each like to do. Krakauer explains in random chapters that catch you by surprise because you never know if he is talking about Chris or himself, both had very similar lives that he always had stories about and would relate his personal life to the life of Chris McCandless.

This book is one of my favorite books of all time. At first when you asked us to do this project I assumed I would just find a book on spark notes to do, until I found this book at Borders. I have always been interested in dropping everything to live in poverty to feel what people less fortunate feel and to try to help them. Even though that is not what this book was about, the variation that he dropped everything to explore the world and all its wonders blows my mind how someone as genius as himself and not to mention how wealthy his family was. Many thoughts ran through my head as I examined this book....