Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 25 pg. 159 – 174

            McCandless has been riding with Gaylord Stuckey to Alaska and he has been telling him about his Alaskan odyssey.  When the two arrived in Fairbanks on April 25, Stuckey bought Alex a big bag of rice.  Alex asked Stuckey if he could take him to the university so that he could study up on what kinds of plants he could eat.  When Stuckey dropped Alex off at the campus at 5:30 pm he asked the least thing Alex could do for him was send him a postcard when he gets back from Alaska, and to call his parents before he goes out.  Alex bought a used semiautomatic .22-caliber Remington with a 4-x-20 scope and a plastic stock.  He closed the deal in a parking lot paying about $125 and then he purchased four one-hundred-round boxes of hollow-point long-rifle shells from a nearby gun shop.

            Four miles west of town, McCandless got a ride from a man named Jim Gallien.  Gallien drove McCandless to the Stampede trail where he dropped him off.  He finally got to the bus beside the Sushana River.  It was outfitted for hikers and campers with bug dope, matches, and other essentials.  At first he had trouble shooting game and by May 9^th he wrote in his journal, “Famine”.  Soon afterwards he started having better luck by shooting squirrel, spruce grouse, duck, goose, and porcupine.  Alex decided to make permanent residence in the bus.  He even was able to shoot a moose on June 9^th.  He tried to smoke it to preserve the meat, but by June 14^th maggots got to it and he considered it a major tragedy.  In early July he met the first of two major setbacks.  He was about to head back to civilization when the river that he had crossed over had quadrupled in size causing him to go back to the bus.

            The author portrays McCandless as caring for all life and realizing the waste of life that he caused when he killed the moose.  Alex shows compassion to animals and when he had to hunt, he would only kill what he needed.