Into the Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 24 pg. 144 – 159

            Jon Krakauer was stuck in his tent on Devils Thumb for three days.  In there he chain-smoked and read and when he ran out of reading material he looked up at the top of his tent and started counting the stitches up to hours at end.  He also smoked a victory cigar that he was supposed to smoke at the top of the mountain, which was full of marijuana.  Krakauer tried to heat himself up some oatmeal but in the process burnt a hole in his father’s nylon tent he was borrowing.  His father is a stern man whose brash demeanor blocked his deep insecurity.  Lewis Krakauer was a man that liked to compete with the world.  To him everything was a challenge.  He wanted Jon to enroll in medical school ever since he was born.  Krakauer rebelled when he was a teen and these arguments usually ended up in the gap between them to increase.  He then became ill from polio and was sent to a mental institute.  Krakauer instead of deciding to go back to base camp, thinks he can wait one more night.  Krakauer gets lost and has to dig himself a little hole to hide in for the night.  Krakauer decided to go for the low road so he took another route that appeared to be easier.  He made it to the top.

            Chris McCandless left Carthage and headed to Canada.  There he took a pit stop at Liard River Hot spring.  There he met Gaylord Stuckey.  Stuckey offered him a ride to Alaska and Alex accepted it.

            Lewis Krakauer, Jon Krakauer’s father, seems to be a man looking for the best for his son, kind of like Chris’s father.  Lewis wanted Jon to go into the medical field but in his teenage years, he revolted.  This sounds similarly like Chris’s father and son relationship.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 23 pg.127-144

            Carine McCandless is Chris’s younger sister who now resides in her Virginia Beach home.  On her mantel are two photos of Chris, one when he was a junior in high school, and another when he was seven years old at Easter.  In both photos, Chris’s expression remains the same as though someone was interrupting his thoughts to take a meaningless photo.  The summer he disappeared, Chris wanted to take Carine’s dog Buck with him on a road trip.  His parents said no since Buck had just been hit by a car and was still resting.  Chris’s parents and Carine all wonder how things would have turned out if he brought Buck with him.  Chris wouldn’t think twice about putting his life in danger, but he would never risk Buck’s.  There would have been less of a chance of Chris injuring himself if Buck had gone with him.  Chris and his sister, Carine, had been very close in their childhood.  In a letter that Chris wrote about his parents, he says, “I like to talk to you about this since you are the only person in the world who could possibly understand what I am saying.  When Chris’s body was found, Carine was hysterical for five hours and couldn’t be communicated to.  Once she got over it her and her boyfriend, Chris Fish, flew to Fairbanks to gather Chris’s remains.  To relieve her stress, Carine started eating plenty of food and soon gained 10 pounds, and so did her father, Walt, who gained eight pounds.

            Chris’s final postcard to Wayne Westerberg said, “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man.  I now walk into the wild.”  Jon Krakauer used to be reckless and not think twice about whether or not he should risk his life climbing a mountain or not.  On one occasion, Krakauer quit his job at as a construction worker and drove to Alaska to climb the Devils Thumb.  When he was at Gig Harbor, he met a woman named Kai Sandburn, who offered him dinner for the night.  He then began his climb up the mountain.  Krakauer was only planning on spending three weeks or a month on the mountain, so he paid a bush pilot to drop six cardboard cartons of supplies to help him.  He tried two times to climb the mountain but couldn't make it.  The only way to go now was down.

            Jon Krakauer in this segment is comparing his own life as a mountain climber to that of Chris McCandless.  They were both willing to put their own lives at risk in order to complete a certain goal that they had each set for themselves.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 22 pg. 102 – 126

            Samuel Walter McCandless still wonders how a kid with so much compassion cause so much pain several weeks after his son turned up dead in Alaska.  Four large poster boards with photos documenting Chris’s life stand up on their dining room table.  Walt works for NASA and was the pioneering engineer for the Seasat launch.  His resume says Current U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret.  He performs consulting services aligned with remote sensor and satellite system design.  In 1957, when Walt just finished collage, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1.  Walt wanted to join the race for space so he took a job with Hughes Aircraft.  In 1959, he had five children but then his marriage became strained.  He divorced his wife Marcia.  Walt started dating a secretary named Wilhelmina Johnson, who everyone called, Billie.  The two got married and Billie gave birth to Chris.  When Chris was two, he snuck out of his house, walked across the street to a neighbor’s house, and raided their candy jar.  Billie and Walt worked out of the house in their office but they usually were too busy to monitor their kids.  Chris had to rely on his sister Carine a lot of the time.  The family traveled a lot in their motor home trailer.  Billie’s dad was like Chris where they loved the outdoors and they didn't like to kill other living creatures.  Chris had a lot of natural talent but he wouldn’t let anyone coach him.  Whenever you tried to teach him something, he put up a wall and didn’t listen.  During high school Chris would drive around giving burgers to homeless people and prostitutes and wanted to learn about their lives.  Chris was embarrassed by the way his parents spent their earnings whenever they treated themselves a little.  Chris was hired by a building contractor and was such a good salesmen that the owner offered to pay Chris’s full college tuition if he stayed in town.  Chris turned down the offer.

            One time while Chris was a little drunk, he told his dad that even though they had their differences, he was the best dad he had ever had.  On a road trip after graduation, Chris got lost in the last week and almost dehydrated in the Mojave dessert.  After his freshmen year at college he worked for his parents and invented a program to help the business.  When his parents asked how he made it work so well, he said, “Hey, it works.  That’s all you need to know.”  Chris’s relation with his parents diminished that summer when he found out that Walt’s split with Marcia was not clean and that he fathered another kid with her.  When everything came to light, Walt and Billie both put it behind them and continued on, but Chris was unable to move forward.  He couldn’t believe that his father would try to hide all of this and that separated the gap between them by a lot.  In 1990, Chris graduated college and he appeared to look happy.  A week after graduation he left his parents lives forever.

            The author portrays Chris and his father as both stubborn and do not like their thoughts to be budged.  Chris got an F in a class because he didn't listen when his teacher said to write his papers in a certain way.  His father was a leader and he would get very angry whenever his decisions were questioned.