Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 20 pg.61 – 85

            In March, McCandless walked into the office at Carthage grain elevator and said he was ready to work.  Wayne Westerberg was lining up his paperwork when Alex came in with a backpack over his shoulder.  He said he was staying only until April 15 in order to get enough money to put together a grubstake.  Alex worked for four weeks in Carthage doing jobs that nobody else wanted to tackle: mucking out warehouses, exterminating vermin, painting, scything weeds.  Alex was invited to eat dinner with Westerberg’s girlfriend every night and Alex would sometimes cook for them.  Chris McCandless and his father Walt McCandless were both stubborn and high-strung.  Walt was the type to exert control while Chris was the type that wanted to be independent so conflict was inevitable.  Chris told his sister that a few months after graduation he’s going to act like he is seeing their perspective on things and then at the right moment, he’d just walk away and never speak to them again.  Chris never had a real girl friend but he would get letters from some girl he met on the road.  Alex rather is with nature than with the opposite-sex.  Alex was the type of person to live out his beliefs.  On his final night in Carthage, Alex partied hard at the bar with everybody and to everyone’s surprise he got on the piano and began to play country-tunes, ragtime, and Toney Bennett numbers.  On the morning of April 15, McCandless departed with only a large backpack and about a thousand dollars in his boot.  On April 18, McCandless wrote to Westerberg saying he was at the border to Canada, and he was going to head north to Alaska.  On April 27, 1992, McCandless wrote again to Westerberg and to Jan Burres and Bob saying that this is the last they’ll hear from him and that he now walks into the wild.

            The article about Chris McCandless in the Outside magazine made many people question Chris’s sanity.  Alaskans made many of the negative comments and some wrote that Chris was a nut in their book.  A man named Jan Burres complained saying that he has seen over the past 15 years many nuts like McCandless.

            Krakauer writes his perspective about why Chris acted this way, but he also includes the readers of the articles perspectives that think that McCandess and he are nuts.  The reason I believe he is doing this is to show that everyone has a different view on this topic.