Summary and Analysis Chapter 1
The Alaska Interior
Summary
Outside Fairbanks, Alaska, a truck driver stops for a hitchhiker who introduces himself as Alex (though his real name is Christopher Johnson McCandless). The hitchhiker says he is from South Dakota and requests a ride to Denali National Park. He then tells the driver, an electrician named Jim Gallien, that he wants to "walk deep into the bush and 'live off the land for a few months.'"
At first Gallien thinks McCandless is "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier." But during their two-hour drive north, Gallien changes his opinion and comes to regard the young man as intelligent and thoughtful. Gallien recognizes, however, that McCandless lacks the basic necessities for surviving in the Alaskan bush: he has no food except for a 10-pound bag of rice, his hiking boots are not waterproof, and his rifle is too small for the large game he will have to kill in order to survive. Other essentials that McCandless lacks include an ax, snowshoes, and a compass.
McCandless plans on following the Stampede Trail, an often unmarked route in the wilderness north of Mount McKinley. Gallien tries to talk him out of this, but the young man is undeterred, claiming there isn't anything that he can't deal with on his own. On Tuesday, April 28, 1992, "Alex" (McCandless) disappears down the Stampede Trail.
Analysis
Into the Wild begins not with the birth of its main character, or even with the beginning of the journey that the book will trace, but with an important turning point late in Christopher McCandless's trip through the American West: his final encounter with another human before he enters the Alaskan wilderness. The epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey both start similarly, employing a technique the ancients called beginning in medias res — "in the middle of things." Though Into the Wild is a nonfiction book (that is, a true story), Jon Krakauer's choice to start it in this fashion encourages the reader to connect Christopher McCandless's journey with that of the fictional character Odysseus (as well as other characters, like Aeneas and the protagonist of Dante's Divine Comedy, who resemble Odysseus) — and to consider that McCandless himself may be a kind of hero.
Note that McCandless has chosen to call himself Alex, short for "Alexander Supertramp." The adoption of this alias represents McCandless's rejection of the parents who named him and his parents' values. It also places him within a tradition of American characters who, as part of the process of reinventing themselves, change their names. Think of Jay Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby), born and raised James Gatz before transforming himself into a glamorous millionaire. McCandless may have chosen "Alexander" to honor Alexander the Great, a conqueror of vast territories previously unknown to him. And although Supertramp is the name of a British rock band from the 1970s, the reference more likely signals McCandless's aspiration to be a super tramp — a great wanderer.
Finally, McCandless may have been aware of a long line of characters from American literature who reject society and its values by "lighting out for the territories" — heading, that is, "into the wild." These include Mark Twain's creation Huckleberry Finn, Ishmael from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Ernest Hemingway's character Nick Adams, and many others.
The Alaska Interior
Summary
Outside Fairbanks, Alaska, a truck driver stops for a hitchhiker who introduces himself as Alex (though his real name is Christopher Johnson McCandless). The hitchhiker says he is from South Dakota and requests a ride to Denali National Park. He then tells the driver, an electrician named Jim Gallien, that he wants to "walk deep into the bush and 'live off the land for a few months.'"
At first Gallien thinks McCandless is "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier." But during their two-hour drive north, Gallien changes his opinion and comes to regard the young man as intelligent and thoughtful. Gallien recognizes, however, that McCandless lacks the basic necessities for surviving in the Alaskan bush: he has no food except for a 10-pound bag of rice, his hiking boots are not waterproof, and his rifle is too small for the large game he will have to kill in order to survive. Other essentials that McCandless lacks include an ax, snowshoes, and a compass.
McCandless plans on following the Stampede Trail, an often unmarked route in the wilderness north of Mount McKinley. Gallien tries to talk him out of this, but the young man is undeterred, claiming there isn't anything that he can't deal with on his own. On Tuesday, April 28, 1992, "Alex" (McCandless) disappears down the Stampede Trail.
Analysis
Into the Wild begins not with the birth of its main character, or even with the beginning of the journey that the book will trace, but with an important turning point late in Christopher McCandless's trip through the American West: his final encounter with another human before he enters the Alaskan wilderness. The epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey both start similarly, employing a technique the ancients called beginning in medias res — "in the middle of things." Though Into the Wild is a nonfiction book (that is, a true story), Jon Krakauer's choice to start it in this fashion encourages the reader to connect Christopher McCandless's journey with that of the fictional character Odysseus (as well as other characters, like Aeneas and the protagonist of Dante's Divine Comedy, who resemble Odysseus) — and to consider that McCandless himself may be a kind of hero.
Note that McCandless has chosen to call himself Alex, short for "Alexander Supertramp." The adoption of this alias represents McCandless's rejection of the parents who named him and his parents' values. It also places him within a tradition of American characters who, as part of the process of reinventing themselves, change their names. Think of Jay Gatsby (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby), born and raised James Gatz before transforming himself into a glamorous millionaire. McCandless may have chosen "Alexander" to honor Alexander the Great, a conqueror of vast territories previously unknown to him. And although Supertramp is the name of a British rock band from the 1970s, the reference more likely signals McCandless's aspiration to be a super tramp — a great wanderer.
Finally, McCandless may have been aware of a long line of characters from American literature who reject society and its values by "lighting out for the territories" — heading, that is, "into the wild." These include Mark Twain's creation Huckleberry Finn, Ishmael from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Ernest Hemingway's character Nick Adams, and many others.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 2
The Stampede Trail
Summary
The action of the book fast-forwards to early September 1992 when five strangers fortuitously converge on a bus abandoned by a river near Alaska's Stampede Trail. The first two visitors, an Anchorage couple, notice a bad smell coming from the bus and see a note taped to the bus's rear exit door, which reads:
S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is NO JOKE. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless. August?
The Anchorage couple is too upset by the note and the smell of decay to investigate further. They are soon joined, however, by three hunters riding all-terrain vehicles. Looking inside the bus, one of the men, an auto-body shop employee named Gordon Samel, discovers a dead body in a sleeping bag atop a makeshift bunk.
Another hunter uses his two-way radio to contact Alaska State Troopers so they can evacuate the body. The following morning, a police helicopter arrives and the body of Christopher McCandless is removed, along with his camera and film, the S.O.S. note, and a diary.
An autopsy on McCandless finds no broken bones or internal injuries. Because his remains weigh a mere 67 pounds, starvation is recorded as the cause of death.
Analysis
This chapter introduces one of the primary motifs of Into the Wild, that of documents. Because the book's subject, Christopher McCandless, has died before author Jon Krakauer can meet him, Krakauer must rely on the testimony of the people McCandless encountered in order to stitch together the story of the young man's journey — and especially on the documents McCandless left behind. The first of these documents is McCandless's S.O.S. note. Others will include his journals, the notes he made in the books he read, graffiti he scratched into various surfaces, and photos he took of himself. To these Krakauer will add maps of the places McCandless visited, relevant quotations from a wide variety of authors, and even a brief memoir of the author's own young manhood, inserted near the end of Into the Wild. All of these enrich our understanding of McCandless and help us to believe that the amazing story we read in Into the Wild really happened.
The fact that someone as articulate and effective at communicating as McCandless died alone, having written a kind of letter (the S.O.S. note) that went unread until it was too late, is an example of irony. Also ironic: McCandless, who encountered no one during the four months between his entrance into the bush and his death there of starvation, is discovered not by one fellow trekker but by five — all within days of McCandless's death.
The Stampede Trail
Summary
The action of the book fast-forwards to early September 1992 when five strangers fortuitously converge on a bus abandoned by a river near Alaska's Stampede Trail. The first two visitors, an Anchorage couple, notice a bad smell coming from the bus and see a note taped to the bus's rear exit door, which reads:
S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is NO JOKE. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless. August?
The Anchorage couple is too upset by the note and the smell of decay to investigate further. They are soon joined, however, by three hunters riding all-terrain vehicles. Looking inside the bus, one of the men, an auto-body shop employee named Gordon Samel, discovers a dead body in a sleeping bag atop a makeshift bunk.
Another hunter uses his two-way radio to contact Alaska State Troopers so they can evacuate the body. The following morning, a police helicopter arrives and the body of Christopher McCandless is removed, along with his camera and film, the S.O.S. note, and a diary.
An autopsy on McCandless finds no broken bones or internal injuries. Because his remains weigh a mere 67 pounds, starvation is recorded as the cause of death.
Analysis
This chapter introduces one of the primary motifs of Into the Wild, that of documents. Because the book's subject, Christopher McCandless, has died before author Jon Krakauer can meet him, Krakauer must rely on the testimony of the people McCandless encountered in order to stitch together the story of the young man's journey — and especially on the documents McCandless left behind. The first of these documents is McCandless's S.O.S. note. Others will include his journals, the notes he made in the books he read, graffiti he scratched into various surfaces, and photos he took of himself. To these Krakauer will add maps of the places McCandless visited, relevant quotations from a wide variety of authors, and even a brief memoir of the author's own young manhood, inserted near the end of Into the Wild. All of these enrich our understanding of McCandless and help us to believe that the amazing story we read in Into the Wild really happened.
The fact that someone as articulate and effective at communicating as McCandless died alone, having written a kind of letter (the S.O.S. note) that went unread until it was too late, is an example of irony. Also ironic: McCandless, who encountered no one during the four months between his entrance into the bush and his death there of starvation, is discovered not by one fellow trekker but by five — all within days of McCandless's death.
mmary and Analysis Chapter 3 - Carthage
Summary
The action now moves to the small town of Carthage, South Dakota. Two months after the discovery of McCandless's corpse, a grain-elevator owner and combine crew manager named Wayne Westerberg reminisces about the "odd young man" he knew as Alex.
Westerberg picked up McCandless, who was hitchhiking, in Montana in the fall of 1990. McCandless was intense, talkative — and hungry. The boy's initial plan was to go to Saco Hot Springs, a place he had heard about from some "rubber tramps" (people who wander about via car or truck — versus "leather tramps," who wander on foot). It was raining hard when Westerberg was going to drop off McCandless, however, so he offered McCandless his nearby trailer to bunk in. McCandless stayed for three days, at the end of which Westerberg told McCandless to look him up in Carthage if he ever needed a job.
A few weeks later, McCandless showed up in Carthage and eagerly worked at a variety of physically challenging jobs at Westerberg's grain elevator. McCandless lived in his large house with a rotating cast of Westerberg's employees and friends. When Westerberg was jailed for pirating satellite television service, however, the work dried up and McCandless was on his own again.
Before leaving Carthage, McCandless gave Westerberg a 1942 edition of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, signing it "from Alexander." Westerberg had discovered earlier from tax forms that "Alex's" real name was Christopher and sensed that " . . . something wasn't right between him and his family . . . "
In fact, McCandless had grown up in Annandale, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), with his younger sister, Carine; their aerospace engineer father; and their mother, who worked with their father in various business ventures. McCandless also had six half-brothers and half-sisters from his father's first marriage. In 1990 he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta with a degree in history and anthropology.
He had received a bequest from a family friend, but instead of using the money that remained (about $24,000) to attend law school, as McCandless's parents assumed he would, he donated it to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger.
At his graduation ceremony in May 1990, McCandless told his parents he was going to take a road trip during the summer, saying, "I think I'm going to disappear for a while." By the time his parents realized that they had no way of contacting him, some three months later, their son had disappeared — and unbeknownst to them, he had chosen a new name: Alexander Supertramp.
Analysis
This chapter begins to explore the character of Christopher McCandless in depth. Far from being a stereotypical slacker, he was hard-working, according to Wayne Westerberg. The fact that he had read the long and difficult War and Peace indicates that McCandless was intelligent and studious. (Indeed, we learn as well in this chapter that he was a success at selective Emory University.)
Most indicative of all with respect to McCandless's character are the things he renounced: $24,000 and his very name. In doing so, he seems to have been rejecting his family and what he saw as their materialistic values. This information doesn't fully explain why Christopher McCandless would forge alone into the Alaskan wilderness, but it begins to address the motivation for this bizarre act.
The fact that McCandless never told his parents what he planned to do could indicate a lack of resolve on his part, or even cowardice. It also shows that the young man thoughtful enough to present Wayne Westerberg with an inscribed copy of one of his favorite books was callous enough regarding his parents' feelings to leave them in the dark regarding their son's whereabouts.
Considering that he eventually would die of starvation, McCandless's gift of $24,000 to OXFAM, an organization dedicated to fighting hunger, is an example of irony.
Summary
The action now moves to the small town of Carthage, South Dakota. Two months after the discovery of McCandless's corpse, a grain-elevator owner and combine crew manager named Wayne Westerberg reminisces about the "odd young man" he knew as Alex.
Westerberg picked up McCandless, who was hitchhiking, in Montana in the fall of 1990. McCandless was intense, talkative — and hungry. The boy's initial plan was to go to Saco Hot Springs, a place he had heard about from some "rubber tramps" (people who wander about via car or truck — versus "leather tramps," who wander on foot). It was raining hard when Westerberg was going to drop off McCandless, however, so he offered McCandless his nearby trailer to bunk in. McCandless stayed for three days, at the end of which Westerberg told McCandless to look him up in Carthage if he ever needed a job.
A few weeks later, McCandless showed up in Carthage and eagerly worked at a variety of physically challenging jobs at Westerberg's grain elevator. McCandless lived in his large house with a rotating cast of Westerberg's employees and friends. When Westerberg was jailed for pirating satellite television service, however, the work dried up and McCandless was on his own again.
Before leaving Carthage, McCandless gave Westerberg a 1942 edition of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, signing it "from Alexander." Westerberg had discovered earlier from tax forms that "Alex's" real name was Christopher and sensed that " . . . something wasn't right between him and his family . . . "
In fact, McCandless had grown up in Annandale, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), with his younger sister, Carine; their aerospace engineer father; and their mother, who worked with their father in various business ventures. McCandless also had six half-brothers and half-sisters from his father's first marriage. In 1990 he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta with a degree in history and anthropology.
He had received a bequest from a family friend, but instead of using the money that remained (about $24,000) to attend law school, as McCandless's parents assumed he would, he donated it to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger.
At his graduation ceremony in May 1990, McCandless told his parents he was going to take a road trip during the summer, saying, "I think I'm going to disappear for a while." By the time his parents realized that they had no way of contacting him, some three months later, their son had disappeared — and unbeknownst to them, he had chosen a new name: Alexander Supertramp.
Analysis
This chapter begins to explore the character of Christopher McCandless in depth. Far from being a stereotypical slacker, he was hard-working, according to Wayne Westerberg. The fact that he had read the long and difficult War and Peace indicates that McCandless was intelligent and studious. (Indeed, we learn as well in this chapter that he was a success at selective Emory University.)
Most indicative of all with respect to McCandless's character are the things he renounced: $24,000 and his very name. In doing so, he seems to have been rejecting his family and what he saw as their materialistic values. This information doesn't fully explain why Christopher McCandless would forge alone into the Alaskan wilderness, but it begins to address the motivation for this bizarre act.
The fact that McCandless never told his parents what he planned to do could indicate a lack of resolve on his part, or even cowardice. It also shows that the young man thoughtful enough to present Wayne Westerberg with an inscribed copy of one of his favorite books was callous enough regarding his parents' feelings to leave them in the dark regarding their son's whereabouts.
Considering that he eventually would die of starvation, McCandless's gift of $24,000 to OXFAM, an organization dedicated to fighting hunger, is an example of irony.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 4
Detrital Wash
Summary
The next evidence of Christopher McCandless surfaces not far from Lake Mead in Nevada, when a ranger with the National Park Service inadvertently discovers the yellow Datsun in which McCandless drove west from Atlanta. Covered in mud, the car has been hidden under a tarp and is parked on a dry riverbed, apparently struck by a flash flood. There is no sign of the car's owner.
McCandless's journal documents what happened. Following the flash flood, he hid his car and buried its license plates along with his rifle. He piled his paper money together — about $120 — and set it on fire. With the rest of his things in a backpack, McCandless set out to hike around Lake Mead. At times the temperature reached 120 degrees, and soon he was suffering from heat stroke. Passing boaters gave him a ride to a marina at the end of the lake.
He next hitchhiked around the West for two months. While hitchhiking, he met a man known as "Crazy Ernie," who offered him work at a rundown ranch in northern California. After working at the ranch for 11 days, however, McCandless realized that Crazy Ernie was never going to pay him, so he left the ranch and resumed hitchhiking.
McCandless hitched up the coast to Oregon and was picking berries along the side of the road when a van stopped for him — the van's drivers, Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob, thought he looked hungry. Rubber tramps who were driving from town to town selling goods at flea markets, the couple offered McCandless a ride. His parents hired a private investigator to find their son, who discovered that he had abandoned his car and received a hitchhiking ticket.
In Needles, California, McCandless reaches the Colorado River. He walks south through the desert, arriving in Topock, Arizona, where he buys a second-hand canoe. He paddles it south, his goal being to follow the Colorado River into Mexico, to the Gulf of California, and ultimately to the Pacific Ocean.
McCandless travels through Lake Havasu, the Bill Williams River, the Colorado River Indian Reservation, the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, and the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground. He sends a postcard to Wayne Westerberg at the Sioux Falls work-release facility where his friend has been incarcerated. McCandless reaches the Morelos Dam and the Mexican border. Eventually he realizes that he will not reach the Gulf of California traveling this route.
Duck hunters rescue McCandless and give him a ride to a fishing village on the Gulf of California. Later, a violent storm engulfs the canoe, and powerful tides threaten to carry McCandless out to sea. Eventually he manages to beach the canoe on a jetty. Shortly thereafter, he leaves Mexico.
McCandless is caught illegally entering the United States from Mexico and spends one night in jail. He next travels back across the southwest, writing in his journal, ". . . extremely uncomfortable in society now and must return to road immediately."
The next journal entry asks, "Can this be the same Alex that set out in July 1990? Malnutrition and the road have taken their toll on his body. Over 25 pounds lost. But his spirit is soaring."
Analysis
This chapter unearths additional motivation for McCandless's irrational Alaska trek to come. During his time in Mexico, he lived on nothing more than "five pounds of rice and what marine life he could pull from the sea," and Krakauer points out that this may have accounted for the young man's belief that he could live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. (Undeniably, McCandless proves himself remarkably capable in this chapter, canoeing through hundreds of miles of hostile landscape and even crossing an international border undetected.)
And yet other questions remain unanswered. His mother says that "Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run." She doesn't say why this is so, however.
The motif of friendship emerges further in these pages, as McCandless, who earlier struck up a friendship with Wayne Westerberg, befriends Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob. One of Into the Wild's many ironies: a young man compelled toward a solitary life, who eventually will die alone, was quite gregarious and made friends easily. Another irony: McCandless abandons a car, the only problem with which is a wet battery, and burns his cash — but quits a job when it becomes clear that he won't be paid for his hard work. He has a complicated relationship with money and possessions, to say the least.
Detrital Wash
Summary
The next evidence of Christopher McCandless surfaces not far from Lake Mead in Nevada, when a ranger with the National Park Service inadvertently discovers the yellow Datsun in which McCandless drove west from Atlanta. Covered in mud, the car has been hidden under a tarp and is parked on a dry riverbed, apparently struck by a flash flood. There is no sign of the car's owner.
McCandless's journal documents what happened. Following the flash flood, he hid his car and buried its license plates along with his rifle. He piled his paper money together — about $120 — and set it on fire. With the rest of his things in a backpack, McCandless set out to hike around Lake Mead. At times the temperature reached 120 degrees, and soon he was suffering from heat stroke. Passing boaters gave him a ride to a marina at the end of the lake.
He next hitchhiked around the West for two months. While hitchhiking, he met a man known as "Crazy Ernie," who offered him work at a rundown ranch in northern California. After working at the ranch for 11 days, however, McCandless realized that Crazy Ernie was never going to pay him, so he left the ranch and resumed hitchhiking.
McCandless hitched up the coast to Oregon and was picking berries along the side of the road when a van stopped for him — the van's drivers, Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob, thought he looked hungry. Rubber tramps who were driving from town to town selling goods at flea markets, the couple offered McCandless a ride. His parents hired a private investigator to find their son, who discovered that he had abandoned his car and received a hitchhiking ticket.
In Needles, California, McCandless reaches the Colorado River. He walks south through the desert, arriving in Topock, Arizona, where he buys a second-hand canoe. He paddles it south, his goal being to follow the Colorado River into Mexico, to the Gulf of California, and ultimately to the Pacific Ocean.
McCandless travels through Lake Havasu, the Bill Williams River, the Colorado River Indian Reservation, the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, the Imperial National Wildlife Refuge, and the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground. He sends a postcard to Wayne Westerberg at the Sioux Falls work-release facility where his friend has been incarcerated. McCandless reaches the Morelos Dam and the Mexican border. Eventually he realizes that he will not reach the Gulf of California traveling this route.
Duck hunters rescue McCandless and give him a ride to a fishing village on the Gulf of California. Later, a violent storm engulfs the canoe, and powerful tides threaten to carry McCandless out to sea. Eventually he manages to beach the canoe on a jetty. Shortly thereafter, he leaves Mexico.
McCandless is caught illegally entering the United States from Mexico and spends one night in jail. He next travels back across the southwest, writing in his journal, ". . . extremely uncomfortable in society now and must return to road immediately."
The next journal entry asks, "Can this be the same Alex that set out in July 1990? Malnutrition and the road have taken their toll on his body. Over 25 pounds lost. But his spirit is soaring."
Analysis
This chapter unearths additional motivation for McCandless's irrational Alaska trek to come. During his time in Mexico, he lived on nothing more than "five pounds of rice and what marine life he could pull from the sea," and Krakauer points out that this may have accounted for the young man's belief that he could live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. (Undeniably, McCandless proves himself remarkably capable in this chapter, canoeing through hundreds of miles of hostile landscape and even crossing an international border undetected.)
And yet other questions remain unanswered. His mother says that "Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run." She doesn't say why this is so, however.
The motif of friendship emerges further in these pages, as McCandless, who earlier struck up a friendship with Wayne Westerberg, befriends Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob. One of Into the Wild's many ironies: a young man compelled toward a solitary life, who eventually will die alone, was quite gregarious and made friends easily. Another irony: McCandless abandons a car, the only problem with which is a wet battery, and burns his cash — but quits a job when it becomes clear that he won't be paid for his hard work. He has a complicated relationship with money and possessions, to say the least.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 5
Bullhead City
Summary
His camera ruined after he buries it in the desert, McCandless stops taking photographs and writing in his journal. As a result, his whereabouts during this time are vague. He works for a while in Las Vegas, then travels to Oregon before heading west once more, to Bullhead City, Arizona. McCandless lives in Bullhead City for two months, working at a McDonald's and even opening a savings account.
He lives as a drifter on the edge of town until an old man offers him the use of a trailer that he is overseeing while its occupants are away. McCandless writes to Jan Burres and Bob, who are not far away, in California's Imperial Valley. They plan on visiting him, but before they can, he turns up at their campsite. He tells them he quit his job because he was tired of the "plastic people" he worked with.
McCandless stays with Jan and Bob at "the Slabs," the remnants of a demolished Navy air base that has become home to a community of drifters. There he helps Jan and Bob sell used books at the local flea market. McCandless proves himself a charismatic salesman and tries to convince every denizen of the Slabs to read Jack London's Call of the Wild. Additionally, he exercises every morning to prepare himself for the rigors of the Alaskan wilderness and discusses survival tactics with Bob, a "self-styled survivalist."
Analysis
In this chapter, a theme introduced when McCandless presented a copy of War and Peace to Wayne Westerberg reappears: the young man's abiding love of literature. Since childhood, he was obsessed with the novels and stories of Jack London, who condemned capitalism and glorified nature. According to Krakauer, however, McCandless forgot he was reading fiction and "conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic."
Krakauer characterizes his protagonist more deeply by means of contrast with those who surround him: Note that even at the Slabs, where snowbirds, rubber tramps, and other anti-establishment types congregated, McCandless was an anomaly: an individual who wanted life to be not easier (as most of the habitués of the Slabs presumably do) but more difficult. Thus he prepares at the Slabs for a life in the harsh wilderness of Alaska.
Notice as well the extent to which author Krakauer relies on documents left behind by McCandless to tell the young man's story. During this part of his journey, he ceases regularly keeping a journal, and Into the Wild becomes sketchier, more reliant on authorial inference.
Bullhead City
Summary
His camera ruined after he buries it in the desert, McCandless stops taking photographs and writing in his journal. As a result, his whereabouts during this time are vague. He works for a while in Las Vegas, then travels to Oregon before heading west once more, to Bullhead City, Arizona. McCandless lives in Bullhead City for two months, working at a McDonald's and even opening a savings account.
He lives as a drifter on the edge of town until an old man offers him the use of a trailer that he is overseeing while its occupants are away. McCandless writes to Jan Burres and Bob, who are not far away, in California's Imperial Valley. They plan on visiting him, but before they can, he turns up at their campsite. He tells them he quit his job because he was tired of the "plastic people" he worked with.
McCandless stays with Jan and Bob at "the Slabs," the remnants of a demolished Navy air base that has become home to a community of drifters. There he helps Jan and Bob sell used books at the local flea market. McCandless proves himself a charismatic salesman and tries to convince every denizen of the Slabs to read Jack London's Call of the Wild. Additionally, he exercises every morning to prepare himself for the rigors of the Alaskan wilderness and discusses survival tactics with Bob, a "self-styled survivalist."
Analysis
In this chapter, a theme introduced when McCandless presented a copy of War and Peace to Wayne Westerberg reappears: the young man's abiding love of literature. Since childhood, he was obsessed with the novels and stories of Jack London, who condemned capitalism and glorified nature. According to Krakauer, however, McCandless forgot he was reading fiction and "conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic."
Krakauer characterizes his protagonist more deeply by means of contrast with those who surround him: Note that even at the Slabs, where snowbirds, rubber tramps, and other anti-establishment types congregated, McCandless was an anomaly: an individual who wanted life to be not easier (as most of the habitués of the Slabs presumably do) but more difficult. Thus he prepares at the Slabs for a life in the harsh wilderness of Alaska.
Notice as well the extent to which author Krakauer relies on documents left behind by McCandless to tell the young man's story. During this part of his journey, he ceases regularly keeping a journal, and Into the Wild becomes sketchier, more reliant on authorial inference.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 6 Anza-Borrego
Summary
McCandless sets up camp along the badlands abutting the Salton Sea, not far from a gathering of aging hippies, itinerant and indigent families, nudists, and snowbirds set up in an area they call Oh-My-God Hot Springs. While hitchhiking into town for food and water, he meets Ronald Franz, a retired army veteran who once had a drinking problem. Franz tries to convince McCandless to leave the encampment, which he believes is a bad influence, but the young man replies, "You don't need to worry about me. I have a college education. I'm not destitute. I'm living like this by choice."
After a few weeks, Franz drives McCandless to San Diego, where he lives on the streets before leaving for Seattle, jumping trains to get from place to place. Franz next hears from his friend "Alex" via a collect call; McCandless is back in California. Franz buys him a meal at a local steak house, and McCandless stays with him for a day, after which the older man drives him to Grand Junction, Colorado. Franz tells McCandless that he wants to adopt him. (His own son died years earlier in a car accident.) McCandless evades this request, telling Franz that they'll discuss it when he returns from Alaska.
From his next stop, in South Dakota, McCandless writes Franz a long letter in which he details his time on the road and suggests that 80-year-old Franz change his sedentary ways. "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure," McCandless writes. "Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life . . . Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon."
Remarkably, Franz heeds the advice of the 24-year-old McCandless and stays at his abandoned campsite for eight months, waiting for the young man's return. Eventually, a hitchhiker he tells about "Alex" says, "I hate to tell you this, mister, but your friend is dead. Froze to death up on the tundra. Just read about it . . . " Franz denounces God for letting his friend die. He withdraws his church membership and resumes drinking.
Analysis
The theme of this chapter is the astonishing ability of Christopher McCandless to win friends and influence people. Not only did he befriend the octogenarian Ronald Franz, but he convinced the old man to change his ways fundamentally at a time in life when most people have settled down for good. It is important to understand that McCandless fled society not because he couldn't get along with others, but because he chose to be alone.
The fact that McCandless achieved this effect by means of a letter speaks to the power of the written word. Remember that he was inspired to head "into the wild" by books he read (Tolstoy's, Jack London's, and others) — and that it is a magazine article which informs the hitchhiker Franz picks up at chapter's end that McCandless has died, thus inspiring the old man to give up on life.
Summary
McCandless sets up camp along the badlands abutting the Salton Sea, not far from a gathering of aging hippies, itinerant and indigent families, nudists, and snowbirds set up in an area they call Oh-My-God Hot Springs. While hitchhiking into town for food and water, he meets Ronald Franz, a retired army veteran who once had a drinking problem. Franz tries to convince McCandless to leave the encampment, which he believes is a bad influence, but the young man replies, "You don't need to worry about me. I have a college education. I'm not destitute. I'm living like this by choice."
After a few weeks, Franz drives McCandless to San Diego, where he lives on the streets before leaving for Seattle, jumping trains to get from place to place. Franz next hears from his friend "Alex" via a collect call; McCandless is back in California. Franz buys him a meal at a local steak house, and McCandless stays with him for a day, after which the older man drives him to Grand Junction, Colorado. Franz tells McCandless that he wants to adopt him. (His own son died years earlier in a car accident.) McCandless evades this request, telling Franz that they'll discuss it when he returns from Alaska.
From his next stop, in South Dakota, McCandless writes Franz a long letter in which he details his time on the road and suggests that 80-year-old Franz change his sedentary ways. "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure," McCandless writes. "Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life . . . Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon."
Remarkably, Franz heeds the advice of the 24-year-old McCandless and stays at his abandoned campsite for eight months, waiting for the young man's return. Eventually, a hitchhiker he tells about "Alex" says, "I hate to tell you this, mister, but your friend is dead. Froze to death up on the tundra. Just read about it . . . " Franz denounces God for letting his friend die. He withdraws his church membership and resumes drinking.
Analysis
The theme of this chapter is the astonishing ability of Christopher McCandless to win friends and influence people. Not only did he befriend the octogenarian Ronald Franz, but he convinced the old man to change his ways fundamentally at a time in life when most people have settled down for good. It is important to understand that McCandless fled society not because he couldn't get along with others, but because he chose to be alone.
The fact that McCandless achieved this effect by means of a letter speaks to the power of the written word. Remember that he was inspired to head "into the wild" by books he read (Tolstoy's, Jack London's, and others) — and that it is a magazine article which informs the hitchhiker Franz picks up at chapter's end that McCandless has died, thus inspiring the old man to give up on life.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 7
Carthage
Summary
In March 1992, McCandless appears at Wayne Westerberg's grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, ready to work. He plans on staying until April 15, when he will buy new gear and travel to Alaska. For four weeks, McCandless works at the grain elevator. According to Westerberg, "Alex definitely wasn't what you'd call mechanically minded." Others note that McCandless lacked common sense and the ability to see "the forest for the trees": he was unable to use a microwave oven properly, for instance.
Westerberg muses on the relationship between McCandless and his father, suggesting that "Alex" " . . . just got stuck on something that happened between him and his dad and couldn't leave it be." Apparently this was true. Walt McCandless was stubborn and controlling. Christopher McCandless was stubborn and independent. In a letter to his sister shortly before he disappeared, Chris wrote of his father and mother, "I'm going to divorce them as my parents once and for all and never speak to either of those idiots again as long as I live."
Still, Christopher McCandless charmed the inhabitants of Carthage. Along with Wayne Westerberg, he also established deep friendships with Westerberg's mother and long-time girlfriend. Westerberg told Krakauer, "There was something fascinating about him . . . He was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs."
Analysis
Regarding McCandless's character, it is interesting — and of course believable — that he can be intelligent, hardworking, and resilient, yet lack mechanical dexterity and perhaps even common sense. While the former characteristic, his awkwardness with machines, is consequential in ways that he manages to recover from (as in the abandonment of his car), the latter, his difficulty being just plain sensible, will have a greater impact.
McCandless's rage toward his parents, and particularly his father, is something that many of those who meet him pick up on. It seems to be their lifestyle more than anything else that McCandless is rejecting when he flees the conventional middle-class American way of life, though why it so repels him is never made completely clear by Into the Wild. It is not uncommon for men and women of Christopher McCandless's age to flee their parents' particular ways of doing things (psychology even has a term for this dynamic: reaction formation), but rarely is the response so extreme, so complete. The degree of McCandless's renunciation of his family's values is a large part of what makes Krakauer's book so fascinating.
Finally, there is something admirable about McCandless's utter devotion to what he believes in. It is easy to be inspired by books and the ideas they espouse, but not so easy to live the kind of life envisioned by thinkers like Tolstoy and London. McCandless "talks the talk" in a way that alienates fewer listeners than one would predict, but he "walks the walk," too — which may account for the fact that so many of those he encountered continued to listen.
Carthage
Summary
In March 1992, McCandless appears at Wayne Westerberg's grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, ready to work. He plans on staying until April 15, when he will buy new gear and travel to Alaska. For four weeks, McCandless works at the grain elevator. According to Westerberg, "Alex definitely wasn't what you'd call mechanically minded." Others note that McCandless lacked common sense and the ability to see "the forest for the trees": he was unable to use a microwave oven properly, for instance.
Westerberg muses on the relationship between McCandless and his father, suggesting that "Alex" " . . . just got stuck on something that happened between him and his dad and couldn't leave it be." Apparently this was true. Walt McCandless was stubborn and controlling. Christopher McCandless was stubborn and independent. In a letter to his sister shortly before he disappeared, Chris wrote of his father and mother, "I'm going to divorce them as my parents once and for all and never speak to either of those idiots again as long as I live."
Still, Christopher McCandless charmed the inhabitants of Carthage. Along with Wayne Westerberg, he also established deep friendships with Westerberg's mother and long-time girlfriend. Westerberg told Krakauer, "There was something fascinating about him . . . He was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs."
Analysis
Regarding McCandless's character, it is interesting — and of course believable — that he can be intelligent, hardworking, and resilient, yet lack mechanical dexterity and perhaps even common sense. While the former characteristic, his awkwardness with machines, is consequential in ways that he manages to recover from (as in the abandonment of his car), the latter, his difficulty being just plain sensible, will have a greater impact.
McCandless's rage toward his parents, and particularly his father, is something that many of those who meet him pick up on. It seems to be their lifestyle more than anything else that McCandless is rejecting when he flees the conventional middle-class American way of life, though why it so repels him is never made completely clear by Into the Wild. It is not uncommon for men and women of Christopher McCandless's age to flee their parents' particular ways of doing things (psychology even has a term for this dynamic: reaction formation), but rarely is the response so extreme, so complete. The degree of McCandless's renunciation of his family's values is a large part of what makes Krakauer's book so fascinating.
Finally, there is something admirable about McCandless's utter devotion to what he believes in. It is easy to be inspired by books and the ideas they espouse, but not so easy to live the kind of life envisioned by thinkers like Tolstoy and London. McCandless "talks the talk" in a way that alienates fewer listeners than one would predict, but he "walks the walk," too — which may account for the fact that so many of those he encountered continued to listen.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 8
Alaska
Summary
After Jon Krakauer's article on McCandless appeared in Outside magazine, the author received many letters suggesting that the young man had been mentally ill. Other mail simply questioned his judgment: "Entering the wilderness purposefully ill-prepared, and surviving a near-death experience does not make you a better human, it makes you damn lucky," wrote one reader.
Another reader asked, "Why would anyone intending to 'live off the land for a few months' forget Boy Scout rule number one: Be Prepared?"
This chapter offers examples of three others besides Christopher McCandless (Gene Rosselini, John Waterman, and Carl McCunn) who traveled to Alaska to live off the land and failed, most of them miserably. In doing so, it attempts to discover why those individuals — and, by extension, McCandless himself — thought they could live a simple life in a harsh landscape.
Analysis
This chapter offers context for, and thus perspective on, McCandless's situation. By quoting from some of the many outraged responses to his article, Krakauer shares with the reader the typical reaction to McCandless's story: smug superiority laced with disbelief that anyone could be so foolhardy.
And yet, as the examples of Rosselini, Waterman, and McCunn demonstrate, McCandless is hardly the only individual impelled to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. At the same time, these others provide Krakauer with an opportunity to highlight McCandless's uniqueness; the author characterizes him by contrast with his predecessors. Similar to Rosselini and Waterman, Christopher McCandless "was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature," the author writes. Like Waterman and McCunn, he lacked common sense. McCandless was unlike Waterman in that he was mentally stable. And in contrast to McCunn, McCandless didn't expect to be saved.
"Although he was rash," Krakauer summarizes, McCandless "wasn't incompetent — he wouldn't have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn't a nutcase, he wasn't a sociopath, he wasn't an outcast. McCandless was something else. . . . A pilgrim perhaps."
Alaska
Summary
After Jon Krakauer's article on McCandless appeared in Outside magazine, the author received many letters suggesting that the young man had been mentally ill. Other mail simply questioned his judgment: "Entering the wilderness purposefully ill-prepared, and surviving a near-death experience does not make you a better human, it makes you damn lucky," wrote one reader.
Another reader asked, "Why would anyone intending to 'live off the land for a few months' forget Boy Scout rule number one: Be Prepared?"
This chapter offers examples of three others besides Christopher McCandless (Gene Rosselini, John Waterman, and Carl McCunn) who traveled to Alaska to live off the land and failed, most of them miserably. In doing so, it attempts to discover why those individuals — and, by extension, McCandless himself — thought they could live a simple life in a harsh landscape.
Analysis
This chapter offers context for, and thus perspective on, McCandless's situation. By quoting from some of the many outraged responses to his article, Krakauer shares with the reader the typical reaction to McCandless's story: smug superiority laced with disbelief that anyone could be so foolhardy.
And yet, as the examples of Rosselini, Waterman, and McCunn demonstrate, McCandless is hardly the only individual impelled to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. At the same time, these others provide Krakauer with an opportunity to highlight McCandless's uniqueness; the author characterizes him by contrast with his predecessors. Similar to Rosselini and Waterman, Christopher McCandless "was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature," the author writes. Like Waterman and McCunn, he lacked common sense. McCandless was unlike Waterman in that he was mentally stable. And in contrast to McCunn, McCandless didn't expect to be saved.
"Although he was rash," Krakauer summarizes, McCandless "wasn't incompetent — he wouldn't have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn't a nutcase, he wasn't a sociopath, he wasn't an outcast. McCandless was something else. . . . A pilgrim perhaps."
Summary and Analysis Chapter 9
Davis Gulch
Summary
Author Krakauer quotes a letter written by Everett Reuss, an artistic resident of Utah who disappeared into the desert of the American Southwest in 1934: "The beauty of this country is becoming part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler. I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly."
Krakauer suggests that this letter could have been written 60 years later by another young wanderer: Christopher McCandless. Like McCandless, Reuss also changed his name, at first requesting that his family call him Lan Rameau, and then changing his identity once again, to Evert Rulan. Additionally, Reuss identified so strongly with Jules Verne's science fiction that he frequently referred to himself as Captain Nemo, the character who flees civilization in Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In fact, the last evidence of Everett Reuss was found in Davis Gulch, along the Colorado River in Utah, where he inscribed "NEMO 1934"in stone on the entrance to an ancient Anasazi Indian granary. Reuss was never found, and Krakauer enumerates various theories to explain his disappearance.
Krakauer connects Everett Reuss and Christopher McCandless with those seeking solitude at other times, in other places, by briefly discussing the Irish monks who inhabited an island called Pepos off of Iceland. These monks created stone dwellings in the fifth and sixth centuries, hundreds of years before the Anasazi built their desert structures in Davis Gulch.
Analysis
This is a second consecutive chapter in which the author attempts to illuminate McCandless's character by comparing and contrasting it to those of his predecessors. In doing so, Krakauer further convinces the reader that although McCandless was unique, the impulses that drove him were not unprecedented. Nor are these impulses an exclusively American phenomenon. In fact, although rare, the drive toward solitude crosses continents and millennia, as the example of the Irish monks demonstrates.
Davis Gulch
Summary
Author Krakauer quotes a letter written by Everett Reuss, an artistic resident of Utah who disappeared into the desert of the American Southwest in 1934: "The beauty of this country is becoming part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler. I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly."
Krakauer suggests that this letter could have been written 60 years later by another young wanderer: Christopher McCandless. Like McCandless, Reuss also changed his name, at first requesting that his family call him Lan Rameau, and then changing his identity once again, to Evert Rulan. Additionally, Reuss identified so strongly with Jules Verne's science fiction that he frequently referred to himself as Captain Nemo, the character who flees civilization in Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In fact, the last evidence of Everett Reuss was found in Davis Gulch, along the Colorado River in Utah, where he inscribed "NEMO 1934"in stone on the entrance to an ancient Anasazi Indian granary. Reuss was never found, and Krakauer enumerates various theories to explain his disappearance.
Krakauer connects Everett Reuss and Christopher McCandless with those seeking solitude at other times, in other places, by briefly discussing the Irish monks who inhabited an island called Pepos off of Iceland. These monks created stone dwellings in the fifth and sixth centuries, hundreds of years before the Anasazi built their desert structures in Davis Gulch.
Analysis
This is a second consecutive chapter in which the author attempts to illuminate McCandless's character by comparing and contrasting it to those of his predecessors. In doing so, Krakauer further convinces the reader that although McCandless was unique, the impulses that drove him were not unprecedented. Nor are these impulses an exclusively American phenomenon. In fact, although rare, the drive toward solitude crosses continents and millennia, as the example of the Irish monks demonstrates.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 12
Annandale
Summary
This chapter continues the exploration of McCandless's character and how it was formed during his youth. Krakauer tells the reader that McCandless took a road trip the summer before his freshman year of college. He promised to call his parents every three days, but soon stopped phoning them altogether. When he returned home, McCandless was almost unrecognizable — seriously underweight and with long, unruly hair. He had lost his way in the Mojave Desert and nearly died of dehydration. His parents tried to counsel McCandless to prevent the situation from ever repeating itself, but he didn't pay attention.
McCandless received near-perfect grades during his first year of college. He wrote for the school newspaper and considered attending law school. But the summer after his second year at Emory, McCandless's personality appeared to have grown markedly different.
The author traces McCandless's "smoldering anger" to the fact that during his earlier drive out west, McCandless had revisited his childhood home in El Segundo, California, and discovered that his father had lived a double life for several years. Chris had been born to his mother, Billie, while father Walt was still married to his first wife, Marcia. And two years after Chris was born, Walt McCandless fathered another child with Marcia.
Discovering this duplicity infuriated McCandless. "But he did not confront his parents with what he knew," Krakauer writes. "He chose instead to make a secret of his dark knowledge and express his rage obliquely, in silence and sullen withdrawal."
After his junior year, McCandless took another road trip, this time driving all the way to Alaska. Back at Emory for his senior year, he began to withdraw from both friends and family. After his graduation, he ceased altogether to communicate with his parents and the sister with whom he had been close.
As the months passed with no word from her son, Billie McCandless worried more and more. One night in July 1992, she awoke in the middle of the night, certain she had heard her son's voice begging "Mom! Help me!"
Analysis
Two factors emerge in this chapter that clearly contributed to McCandless's flight into the wilderness — and his eventual death.
First, Walt McCandless comments that "Chris was good at almost everything he ever tried . . . which made him supremely overconfident." This bit of characterization goes a long way toward explaining McCandless's bewildering lack of preparation for his Alaskan "adventure." There is no evidence that he failed at much, if anything, during his childhood and adolescence, which may have exacerbated the hubris naturally felt by many young adults.
As to why McCandless's overconfidence found its outlet in a radical rejection of his parents' bourgeois values — and his family altogether — the information that emerges in this chapter about his father's double life could well have offered the motivation. Krakauer doesn't linger on this episode, but if nothing else, it seems to have provided the match that lit McCandless's short fuse.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 10
Fairbanks
Summary
A hiker in Alaska, a man estimated to be in his late twenties or thirties, is found dead of starvation in September 1992. The story is covered in the Anchorage Daily News and picked up by the New York Times. Jim Gallien, the last person to see McCandless alive, thinks the dead hiker is McCandless, as does Wayne Westerberg. Christopher McCandless's oldest half-brother, Sam, is questioned by the Fairbanks, Alaska, police, who show him a photo of a gaunt man with a beard and long hair — the opposite of the shorn, clean-shaven sibling that Sam remembers. As the chapter ends, he prepares to tell his father and stepmother the heartbreaking news.
Analysis
By flashing forward to McCandless's death, Krakauer intensifies the drama of his story. He reminds us that McCandless's adventure ends tragically. In addition, the author emphasizes the young man's connections to those whose lives he touched: friends Gallien and Westerberg, as well as MCandless's relatives.
The prior two chapters have emphasized McCandless's commonalities with others who have sought adventure and solitude in the wild. This short chapter reminds us that, although it was not unique, McCandless's story was noteworthy, newsworthy — it was covered not only in Alaska but in the national press.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 11 - Chesapeake BeachSummary
Jon Krakauer interviews Walt McCandless at home after his son's body is recovered from the abandoned bus. Walt wonders how " . . . a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain."
Krakauer reflects on the dynamics that might have caused a break between father (and mother) and son. Why did Chris disappear and stay out of touch with his parents for two entire years? Like his son, Walt McCandless was an intense individual, often mercurial and at times brooding. A NASA scientist and radar specialist, he was considered brilliant by his colleagues.
According to his parents, Chris was a smart child who was placed in an accelerated school program for gifted students — a program eight-year-old Chris tried to get out of since he didn't want to do the extra schoolwork associated with it. Chris was also eight when he went on his first backpacking trip.
His parents worked hard and weren't readily available to Chris and his younger sister Carine. Additionally, with both parents working together on a consulting venture, the atmosphere around the house was often tense. But the family traveled frequently together, buying an Airstream trailer and taking to the road. Carine McCandless recalls, "There was always a little wanderlust in the family, and it was clear early on that Chris had inherited it."
Though small, Chris was strong for his size and well-coordinated. He had trouble following rules. At the age of 10, McCandless began to run competitively, and in his teens he became a top distance runner in his region. He became interested in ending apartheid in South Africa, and in his senior year of high school, McCandless started talking to friends about smuggling arms into South Africa so they could join the struggle against apartheid. Concerned as well about hunger in America, he bought and distributed hamburgers to indigents in Washington, D.C. McCandless once arranged to let a homeless man live in the trailer his parents had parked near their house. After high school, he was offered a job working in Annandale, but he declined, instead driving across the country before leaving for Emory University in Atlanta.
Analysis
This chapter asks more questions than it answers — and understandably, since the riddles it poses cannot be solved definitively. Are Christopher McCandless's parents responsible for their son's death? Was his personality shaped by, or even inherited from, them? Could his parents have interceded and altered his behavior, thereby changing his fate?
For that matter, what exactly was McCandless rebelling against, aside from middle class ennui? Also, wouldn't it have been more productive for him to have resumed his work on behalf of the homeless, hungry, or disenfranchised after college, instead of indulging his whimsical notions of (his own) survival?
Annandale
Summary
This chapter continues the exploration of McCandless's character and how it was formed during his youth. Krakauer tells the reader that McCandless took a road trip the summer before his freshman year of college. He promised to call his parents every three days, but soon stopped phoning them altogether. When he returned home, McCandless was almost unrecognizable — seriously underweight and with long, unruly hair. He had lost his way in the Mojave Desert and nearly died of dehydration. His parents tried to counsel McCandless to prevent the situation from ever repeating itself, but he didn't pay attention.
McCandless received near-perfect grades during his first year of college. He wrote for the school newspaper and considered attending law school. But the summer after his second year at Emory, McCandless's personality appeared to have grown markedly different.
The author traces McCandless's "smoldering anger" to the fact that during his earlier drive out west, McCandless had revisited his childhood home in El Segundo, California, and discovered that his father had lived a double life for several years. Chris had been born to his mother, Billie, while father Walt was still married to his first wife, Marcia. And two years after Chris was born, Walt McCandless fathered another child with Marcia.
Discovering this duplicity infuriated McCandless. "But he did not confront his parents with what he knew," Krakauer writes. "He chose instead to make a secret of his dark knowledge and express his rage obliquely, in silence and sullen withdrawal."
After his junior year, McCandless took another road trip, this time driving all the way to Alaska. Back at Emory for his senior year, he began to withdraw from both friends and family. After his graduation, he ceased altogether to communicate with his parents and the sister with whom he had been close.
As the months passed with no word from her son, Billie McCandless worried more and more. One night in July 1992, she awoke in the middle of the night, certain she had heard her son's voice begging "Mom! Help me!"
Analysis
Two factors emerge in this chapter that clearly contributed to McCandless's flight into the wilderness — and his eventual death.
First, Walt McCandless comments that "Chris was good at almost everything he ever tried . . . which made him supremely overconfident." This bit of characterization goes a long way toward explaining McCandless's bewildering lack of preparation for his Alaskan "adventure." There is no evidence that he failed at much, if anything, during his childhood and adolescence, which may have exacerbated the hubris naturally felt by many young adults.
As to why McCandless's overconfidence found its outlet in a radical rejection of his parents' bourgeois values — and his family altogether — the information that emerges in this chapter about his father's double life could well have offered the motivation. Krakauer doesn't linger on this episode, but if nothing else, it seems to have provided the match that lit McCandless's short fuse.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 10
Fairbanks
Summary
A hiker in Alaska, a man estimated to be in his late twenties or thirties, is found dead of starvation in September 1992. The story is covered in the Anchorage Daily News and picked up by the New York Times. Jim Gallien, the last person to see McCandless alive, thinks the dead hiker is McCandless, as does Wayne Westerberg. Christopher McCandless's oldest half-brother, Sam, is questioned by the Fairbanks, Alaska, police, who show him a photo of a gaunt man with a beard and long hair — the opposite of the shorn, clean-shaven sibling that Sam remembers. As the chapter ends, he prepares to tell his father and stepmother the heartbreaking news.
Analysis
By flashing forward to McCandless's death, Krakauer intensifies the drama of his story. He reminds us that McCandless's adventure ends tragically. In addition, the author emphasizes the young man's connections to those whose lives he touched: friends Gallien and Westerberg, as well as MCandless's relatives.
The prior two chapters have emphasized McCandless's commonalities with others who have sought adventure and solitude in the wild. This short chapter reminds us that, although it was not unique, McCandless's story was noteworthy, newsworthy — it was covered not only in Alaska but in the national press.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 11 - Chesapeake BeachSummary
Jon Krakauer interviews Walt McCandless at home after his son's body is recovered from the abandoned bus. Walt wonders how " . . . a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain."
Krakauer reflects on the dynamics that might have caused a break between father (and mother) and son. Why did Chris disappear and stay out of touch with his parents for two entire years? Like his son, Walt McCandless was an intense individual, often mercurial and at times brooding. A NASA scientist and radar specialist, he was considered brilliant by his colleagues.
According to his parents, Chris was a smart child who was placed in an accelerated school program for gifted students — a program eight-year-old Chris tried to get out of since he didn't want to do the extra schoolwork associated with it. Chris was also eight when he went on his first backpacking trip.
His parents worked hard and weren't readily available to Chris and his younger sister Carine. Additionally, with both parents working together on a consulting venture, the atmosphere around the house was often tense. But the family traveled frequently together, buying an Airstream trailer and taking to the road. Carine McCandless recalls, "There was always a little wanderlust in the family, and it was clear early on that Chris had inherited it."
Though small, Chris was strong for his size and well-coordinated. He had trouble following rules. At the age of 10, McCandless began to run competitively, and in his teens he became a top distance runner in his region. He became interested in ending apartheid in South Africa, and in his senior year of high school, McCandless started talking to friends about smuggling arms into South Africa so they could join the struggle against apartheid. Concerned as well about hunger in America, he bought and distributed hamburgers to indigents in Washington, D.C. McCandless once arranged to let a homeless man live in the trailer his parents had parked near their house. After high school, he was offered a job working in Annandale, but he declined, instead driving across the country before leaving for Emory University in Atlanta.
Analysis
This chapter asks more questions than it answers — and understandably, since the riddles it poses cannot be solved definitively. Are Christopher McCandless's parents responsible for their son's death? Was his personality shaped by, or even inherited from, them? Could his parents have interceded and altered his behavior, thereby changing his fate?
For that matter, what exactly was McCandless rebelling against, aside from middle class ennui? Also, wouldn't it have been more productive for him to have resumed his work on behalf of the homeless, hungry, or disenfranchised after college, instead of indulging his whimsical notions of (his own) survival?
Summary and Analysis Chapter 13
Virginia Beach
Summary
In this chapter, Krakauer interviews Carine McCandless, Chris's younger sister and, until he graduated from college, his confidante. Ten months after her brother's death, Carine can't get through a day without crying about her brother. Carine and her husband were notified of Chris's death shortly after his body was discovered in the Sushana River bus. They traveled to Alaska to bring home Chris's ashes, in Carine's knapsack. Chris's mother, Billie, is in shock over her son's death " . . . weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure."
Analysis
During the plane ride home with Chris's remains, his sister Carine eats "every scrap of food the cabin attendants set in front of her." Soon afterward, however, she discovers she has no appetite and loses so much weight that friends think she has become anorectic. Chris's mother also stops eating, losing eight pounds. His father, Walt, responds the opposite way, putting on eight pounds.
Though both compulsive eating and loss of appetite are not uncommon responses to stress and grief, it is hard not to see the McCandless family's food-related behaviors as connected to Chris's demise. It is as if Billie and Carine are identifying with him, feeling Chris's pain, while Walt is compensating for what killed his son — though none of them are doing what they do intentionally, or even consciously.
Virginia Beach
Summary
In this chapter, Krakauer interviews Carine McCandless, Chris's younger sister and, until he graduated from college, his confidante. Ten months after her brother's death, Carine can't get through a day without crying about her brother. Carine and her husband were notified of Chris's death shortly after his body was discovered in the Sushana River bus. They traveled to Alaska to bring home Chris's ashes, in Carine's knapsack. Chris's mother, Billie, is in shock over her son's death " . . . weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure."
Analysis
During the plane ride home with Chris's remains, his sister Carine eats "every scrap of food the cabin attendants set in front of her." Soon afterward, however, she discovers she has no appetite and loses so much weight that friends think she has become anorectic. Chris's mother also stops eating, losing eight pounds. His father, Walt, responds the opposite way, putting on eight pounds.
Though both compulsive eating and loss of appetite are not uncommon responses to stress and grief, it is hard not to see the McCandless family's food-related behaviors as connected to Chris's demise. It is as if Billie and Carine are identifying with him, feeling Chris's pain, while Walt is compensating for what killed his son — though none of them are doing what they do intentionally, or even consciously.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 14
The Stikine Ice Cap
Summary
Based on his own experiences in Alaska when he was a stubborn, headstrong young man, author Jon Krakauer arrives at the conclusion that McCandless's death wasn't suicide or even the result of an unconscious death wish, but rather an accident. His conclusion is based on the evidence provided by McCandless's journals — as well as the author's personal experience.
The majority of this chapter is devoted to Krakauer's reminiscences about his own youthful obsession with mountain climbing. At 23, for reasons not dissimilar to those that drove McCandless to head into the wilderness, Krakauer decided to climb a rock formation called the Devils Thumb, on Alaska's Stikine Ice Cap.
Having reached Alaska on a fishing boat, Krakauer meets a woman who puts him up for the night before he sets out to scale the Devils Thumb. During his first two days of climbing, along a glacier at the base of the rock formation, Krakauer makes genuine progress. On his third day, however, high winds, stinging sheets of snow, and reduced visibility cause a series of dangerous mishaps. After almost falling into a glacial crevasse, Krakauer sets up camp on a plateau.
Krakauer has arranged ahead of time for supplies to be air-dropped to him so that he can continue his climb. But the pilot engaged to deliver the supplies misreads the altitude, almost entirely missing Krakauer's encampment. Krakauer continues to climb up the glacier. He can now see 3,700 feet below him. "The sour taste of panic rose in my throat," he recalls. "My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake . . . Awkwardly, stiff with fear, I started working my way back down. The climb was over. The only place to go was down."
Analysis
Up to this point in Into the Wild, author Jon Krakauer has maintained journalistic objectivity, or at least the appearance of objectivity. In this chapter he abandons that perspective. Note, however, that Krakauer's integrity as a journalist is not compromised, since he is entirely up-front about the experiences he shares in common with his subject, McCandless. In fact, it would be more ethically suspect if Krakauer did not divulge that he had his own "into the wild" experience as a young man. Because of his candor, readers are able to take this into account when the author views McCandless's activities with some sympathy.
And as a result of reading this chapter and the one that follows, the reader moves closer to McCandless and his perspective. Not only Rosselini, Waterman, McCunn, and Reuss (as well as the Irish monks described) have shared McCandless's impulses, but the author himself. Behavior that seemed utterly bizarre, at the start of Into the Wild, is becoming easier to conceive of with every successive chapter.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 15
The Stikine Ice Cap
Summary
This chapter continues the author's description of his attempted ascent of the Devils Thumb as a young man. Krakauer is forced to remain inside his tent for three days due to high winds and snow. Though he still hasn't reached the summit — and because he may never do so — Krakauer decides to smoke a celebratory marijuana cigar he had been saving. In doing so, he almost burns down the tent, which has been borrowed from his father. Due to fire damage, the temperature inside the tent drops 30 degrees
Next, the author reminisces about his autocratic but generous and loving father. A physician, Lewis Krakauer wanted his son to become a doctor, as well, and groomed him from the time he was a toddler for that profession. Father and son clashed as Jon entered his teens and then young adulthood. Victim of a childhood bout with polio, Lewis begins experiencing symptoms of the disease again in middle age. In medicating himself, he became addicted to a variety of painkillers and eventually attempted suicide. The author contemplates that the off-kilter ambition he inherited from his father is what prevented him "from admitting defeat on the Stikine Ice Cap after my initial attempt to climb the Thumb had failed, even after I nearly burned the tent down."
Prevented by a large storm from reaching the summit, Krakauer huddles inside a bivouac sack while avalanches bury the ledge he balances on. He tunnels out four times; the fifth time, he retreats. But the mountain has not defeated Krakauer yet. He decides to climb the Devils Thumb via another route, up the side he had planned on descending. Eventually he reaches the summit.
Analysis
This chapter further develops the motif of fathers and sons, suggesting explicitly that sons often rebel against their fathers at the same time that they are powerless to resist paternal traits they have inherited. Clearly Krakauer believes that McCandless was driven to do what he did in large measure by his relationship with father Walt.
And this is only part of what Krakauer believes he shared with McCandless. They also shared hubris. "It is easy, when you are young," he writes, "to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic."
Which is not to say that Jon Krakauer believes his younger self to have been identical to Christopher McCandless in every respect. Krakauer says he wasn't as intelligent as McCandless and didn't possess his lofty ideals — but young Krakauer was also, crucially, a superior outdoorsman.
The Stikine Ice Cap
Summary
This chapter continues the author's description of his attempted ascent of the Devils Thumb as a young man. Krakauer is forced to remain inside his tent for three days due to high winds and snow. Though he still hasn't reached the summit — and because he may never do so — Krakauer decides to smoke a celebratory marijuana cigar he had been saving. In doing so, he almost burns down the tent, which has been borrowed from his father. Due to fire damage, the temperature inside the tent drops 30 degrees
Next, the author reminisces about his autocratic but generous and loving father. A physician, Lewis Krakauer wanted his son to become a doctor, as well, and groomed him from the time he was a toddler for that profession. Father and son clashed as Jon entered his teens and then young adulthood. Victim of a childhood bout with polio, Lewis begins experiencing symptoms of the disease again in middle age. In medicating himself, he became addicted to a variety of painkillers and eventually attempted suicide. The author contemplates that the off-kilter ambition he inherited from his father is what prevented him "from admitting defeat on the Stikine Ice Cap after my initial attempt to climb the Thumb had failed, even after I nearly burned the tent down."
Prevented by a large storm from reaching the summit, Krakauer huddles inside a bivouac sack while avalanches bury the ledge he balances on. He tunnels out four times; the fifth time, he retreats. But the mountain has not defeated Krakauer yet. He decides to climb the Devils Thumb via another route, up the side he had planned on descending. Eventually he reaches the summit.
Analysis
This chapter further develops the motif of fathers and sons, suggesting explicitly that sons often rebel against their fathers at the same time that they are powerless to resist paternal traits they have inherited. Clearly Krakauer believes that McCandless was driven to do what he did in large measure by his relationship with father Walt.
And this is only part of what Krakauer believes he shared with McCandless. They also shared hubris. "It is easy, when you are young," he writes, "to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic."
Which is not to say that Jon Krakauer believes his younger self to have been identical to Christopher McCandless in every respect. Krakauer says he wasn't as intelligent as McCandless and didn't possess his lofty ideals — but young Krakauer was also, crucially, a superior outdoorsman.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 16
The Alaska Interior
Summary
Christopher McCandless pauses in his odyssey to visit the Liard River Hot Springs at the threshold of the Yukon Territory. But after taking time to soak in the steaming waters, he can't find another ride. He spends two days at the Liard River before making friends with Gaylord Stuckey, a truck driver who reluctantly gives "Alex" a ride. They converse for the few days the drive takes — discussing McCandless's family, his father's bigamy, and his own desire to live off the land.
On April 25, Stuckey buys a bag of rice for McCandless and then drives him to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, where McCandless wants to look up books on edible plants at the library. Knowing the local seasons better than McCandless, Stuckey points out "Alex, you're too early. There's still two foot, three foot of snow on the ground. There's nothing growing yet."
But McCandless ignores this advice. He agrees to send Stuckey a letter when he returns from Alaska but shrugs off Stuckey's suggestion that he call his parents to let them know where he is.
McCandless spends two days and three nights around Fairbanks, mostly at the university. He finds a field guide to the area's edible plants, writes postcards to Wayne Westerberg and Jan Burres, and buys a used gun (a semiautomatic, .22-caliber Remington) he has located in the classifieds. He leaves the university campus and pitches his tent on frozen ground not far from the road that will take him to the Stampede Trail. On April 28, 1992, McCandless hitches the ride with Jim Gallien that will bring him there.
Tramping through the bush, McCandless soon discovers the abandoned bus along the Sushana River and celebrates the discovery by writing in his journal "Magic Bus Day." At first, he has some difficulty killing small game. After about a month, though, McCandless is routinely shooting and eating squirrels, porcupines, and spruce grouses. He devours local lingonberries and rose hips and climbs a nearby butte.
On June 9, 1992, McCandless kills a moose, and he is so proud of this feat that he takes a photo of the carcass. He spends days trying to cure its meat so he can consume every part of the moose. But he preserves the meat incorrectly, with the result that it becomes infested with vermin and therefore inedible. McCandless must leave the moose carcass for the wolves, which leaves him feeling deeply guilty.
McCandless lists the preparations necessary for leaving the bus, bringing his "final and greatest adventure" to a close. He has made some fatal errors, however. Halfway back to the road, he discovers a three-acre lake in his way. When he first crossed the same area in April, the series of beaver ponds leading up to the Teklanika River had been frozen over and were easy enough to traverse; now, in July, these same beaver ponds have melted. Moreover, the river itself, knee-deep at winter's end, has become a raging torrent — and McCandless is a weak swimmer.
He returns to the bus, chastened, and writes in his journal, "Disaster. . . . Rained in. River look (sic) impossible. Lonely, scared." McCandless does not know — because he refused to obtain a map of the area — that the river is passable only one mile upstream.
Analysis
This chapter, the heart of Into the Wild, reconstructs McCandless's climactic Alaska adventure, following him into the bush and observing his admirable survival skills. Although Krakauer's book is an adventure story, Into the Wild is also a study in character, and Chapter Sixteen is no exception. McCandless is revealed in the moose episode to be highly ethical and deeply sympathetic; the reader cannot help being moved by the enormity of the young man's despair over wasting his kill.
By the same token, McCandless's lack of foresight and his hubris, apparent in a low-level way prior to this time, now yield consequences that will be fatal. He did not anticipate that melting snow would swell the bodies of water he crossed on his way into the bush. And his arrogant refusal to bring a map prevents McCandless from learning that, despite its increased size, the river is fordable upstream — another in a series of ironies that punctuate this book.
The Alaska Interior
Summary
Christopher McCandless pauses in his odyssey to visit the Liard River Hot Springs at the threshold of the Yukon Territory. But after taking time to soak in the steaming waters, he can't find another ride. He spends two days at the Liard River before making friends with Gaylord Stuckey, a truck driver who reluctantly gives "Alex" a ride. They converse for the few days the drive takes — discussing McCandless's family, his father's bigamy, and his own desire to live off the land.
On April 25, Stuckey buys a bag of rice for McCandless and then drives him to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, where McCandless wants to look up books on edible plants at the library. Knowing the local seasons better than McCandless, Stuckey points out "Alex, you're too early. There's still two foot, three foot of snow on the ground. There's nothing growing yet."
But McCandless ignores this advice. He agrees to send Stuckey a letter when he returns from Alaska but shrugs off Stuckey's suggestion that he call his parents to let them know where he is.
McCandless spends two days and three nights around Fairbanks, mostly at the university. He finds a field guide to the area's edible plants, writes postcards to Wayne Westerberg and Jan Burres, and buys a used gun (a semiautomatic, .22-caliber Remington) he has located in the classifieds. He leaves the university campus and pitches his tent on frozen ground not far from the road that will take him to the Stampede Trail. On April 28, 1992, McCandless hitches the ride with Jim Gallien that will bring him there.
Tramping through the bush, McCandless soon discovers the abandoned bus along the Sushana River and celebrates the discovery by writing in his journal "Magic Bus Day." At first, he has some difficulty killing small game. After about a month, though, McCandless is routinely shooting and eating squirrels, porcupines, and spruce grouses. He devours local lingonberries and rose hips and climbs a nearby butte.
On June 9, 1992, McCandless kills a moose, and he is so proud of this feat that he takes a photo of the carcass. He spends days trying to cure its meat so he can consume every part of the moose. But he preserves the meat incorrectly, with the result that it becomes infested with vermin and therefore inedible. McCandless must leave the moose carcass for the wolves, which leaves him feeling deeply guilty.
McCandless lists the preparations necessary for leaving the bus, bringing his "final and greatest adventure" to a close. He has made some fatal errors, however. Halfway back to the road, he discovers a three-acre lake in his way. When he first crossed the same area in April, the series of beaver ponds leading up to the Teklanika River had been frozen over and were easy enough to traverse; now, in July, these same beaver ponds have melted. Moreover, the river itself, knee-deep at winter's end, has become a raging torrent — and McCandless is a weak swimmer.
He returns to the bus, chastened, and writes in his journal, "Disaster. . . . Rained in. River look (sic) impossible. Lonely, scared." McCandless does not know — because he refused to obtain a map of the area — that the river is passable only one mile upstream.
Analysis
This chapter, the heart of Into the Wild, reconstructs McCandless's climactic Alaska adventure, following him into the bush and observing his admirable survival skills. Although Krakauer's book is an adventure story, Into the Wild is also a study in character, and Chapter Sixteen is no exception. McCandless is revealed in the moose episode to be highly ethical and deeply sympathetic; the reader cannot help being moved by the enormity of the young man's despair over wasting his kill.
By the same token, McCandless's lack of foresight and his hubris, apparent in a low-level way prior to this time, now yield consequences that will be fatal. He did not anticipate that melting snow would swell the bodies of water he crossed on his way into the bush. And his arrogant refusal to bring a map prevents McCandless from learning that, despite its increased size, the river is fordable upstream — another in a series of ironies that punctuate this book.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 17
The Stampede Trail
Summary
The author revisits the Teklanika River one year and one week after Christopher McCandless decided not to cross it. Krakauer, however, is well-equipped to ford the river. Accompanied by three accomplished outdoorsmen, the author also is in possession of a detailed topographical map, which reveals that a half-mile downstream from where McCandless tried to cross, there is a gauging station built by the U.S. Geological Survey. The station can't be seen from the Stampede Trail, but after hiking through thick bush, Krakauer and his friends reach it and locate a steel cable. The cable stretches between a 15-foot tower on one side of the river and an outcrop on the opposite shore. Krakauer explains, "Hydrologists traveled back and forth above the river by means of an aluminum basket that is suspended from the cable with pulleys," — a means by which McCandless could have crossed the engorged river.
The author wonders why McCandless didn't attempt another crossing of the Teklanika the next month, in August, instead of staying inside the bus and starving to death. Krakauer and his friends cross the river, and after a long trek they come upon the Sushana River bus. The author inventories its contents: a bag of bird feathers, perhaps meant for insulating McCandless's clothes; a kerosene lamp; Ronald Franz' machete sheath; books; a stove fashioned out of an old oil drum; jeans padded with silver duct tape; hiking boots; toenail clippers; a nylon tent spread across a gaping hole in the bus's window. Krakauer and his companions ruminate about McCandless's demise — was he merely a "loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense?" Small in stature, did McCandless feel he had to prove his manhood by means of extreme physical challenges? Ultimately Krakauer seems to believe that McCandless wasn't consumed by existential despair, but driven by meaning and purpose. He distrusted the value of things that came easily. "He demanded much of himself," the author writes, " — more, in the end, than he could deliver."
Analysis
The ironies multiply in this, the book's penultimate chapter. The basket that Krakauer and his companions discover at the U.S.G.S. station has been secured by hunters to the side of the river on which McCandless camped so as to make crossing the Teklanika harder for outsiders. "If he'd known about it," the author writes, "crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been a trivial matter. Because he had no topographic map, however, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close at hand."
In another irony, McCandless was close to not only the abandoned gauging station but three empty hunting cabins, as well. Did he really go "into the wild" after all? Undoubtedly he was living in a hostile environment during the months he spent in Alaska, but some wouldn't call the area he inhabited the wilderness at all.
The Stampede Trail
Summary
The author revisits the Teklanika River one year and one week after Christopher McCandless decided not to cross it. Krakauer, however, is well-equipped to ford the river. Accompanied by three accomplished outdoorsmen, the author also is in possession of a detailed topographical map, which reveals that a half-mile downstream from where McCandless tried to cross, there is a gauging station built by the U.S. Geological Survey. The station can't be seen from the Stampede Trail, but after hiking through thick bush, Krakauer and his friends reach it and locate a steel cable. The cable stretches between a 15-foot tower on one side of the river and an outcrop on the opposite shore. Krakauer explains, "Hydrologists traveled back and forth above the river by means of an aluminum basket that is suspended from the cable with pulleys," — a means by which McCandless could have crossed the engorged river.
The author wonders why McCandless didn't attempt another crossing of the Teklanika the next month, in August, instead of staying inside the bus and starving to death. Krakauer and his friends cross the river, and after a long trek they come upon the Sushana River bus. The author inventories its contents: a bag of bird feathers, perhaps meant for insulating McCandless's clothes; a kerosene lamp; Ronald Franz' machete sheath; books; a stove fashioned out of an old oil drum; jeans padded with silver duct tape; hiking boots; toenail clippers; a nylon tent spread across a gaping hole in the bus's window. Krakauer and his companions ruminate about McCandless's demise — was he merely a "loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense?" Small in stature, did McCandless feel he had to prove his manhood by means of extreme physical challenges? Ultimately Krakauer seems to believe that McCandless wasn't consumed by existential despair, but driven by meaning and purpose. He distrusted the value of things that came easily. "He demanded much of himself," the author writes, " — more, in the end, than he could deliver."
Analysis
The ironies multiply in this, the book's penultimate chapter. The basket that Krakauer and his companions discover at the U.S.G.S. station has been secured by hunters to the side of the river on which McCandless camped so as to make crossing the Teklanika harder for outsiders. "If he'd known about it," the author writes, "crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been a trivial matter. Because he had no topographic map, however, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close at hand."
In another irony, McCandless was close to not only the abandoned gauging station but three empty hunting cabins, as well. Did he really go "into the wild" after all? Undoubtedly he was living in a hostile environment during the months he spent in Alaska, but some wouldn't call the area he inhabited the wilderness at all.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 18
The Stampede Trail
Summary
On July 8, 1992, McCandless returns to the bus. He resumes hunting small game and gathering edible berries and wild potatoes, but he is burning more calories than he consumes. He reads Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and finishes Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, writing "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED." — a striking sentiment from someone so relentlessly compelled toward solitude.
On July 30, McCandless makes an ominous entry in his journal: "EXTREMELY WEAK, FAULT OF POT. SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY." Krakauer points out that until this journal entry, nothing suggests that McCandless is in danger of starving to death. Though hungry, he is otherwise in good health. Less than one month later, he will be dead. How?
Wayne Westerberg suggests that McCandless ate some potato seeds he bought in South Dakota; potato seeds can become toxic once they have sprouted. But he would have needed to eat many pounds of these seeds, and he doesn't seem to have done so. There is, however, a wild potato that McCandless may have foraged for — and confused with the similar-looking, and toxic, wild sweet pea.
The author imagines a hungry McCandless mistaking one plant for the other and becoming incapacitated. Already worn down by a subsistence diet, his body wasn't able to stave off the emetic effects of the plant, which ultimately killed him. As time goes on, however, Krakauer begins to doubt this hypothesis.
Some four years after McCandless's death, Krakauer finally discovers that a toxic mold can grow on legumes. "I had an epiphany," he writes. "It wasn't the seeds of the wild potato that had done McCandless in; he was probably killed instead by mold that had been growing on those seeds."
Krakauer describes the effects of poisoning by the mold: "The body is prevented from turning what it eats into a source of usable energy. If you ingest too much . . . you are bound to starve, no matter how much food you put into your stomach."
On August 5, McCandless notes in his journal that he has spent 100 days in the wild. Then he writes "BUT IN WEAKEST CONDITION OF LIFE. DEATH LOOMS AS SERIOUS THREAT." Again the author points out McCandless's folly in not having a topographical map: only six miles south of the bus was a Park Service cabin, equipped with first-aid supplies, bedding, and emergency food — a three-hour walk away. Krakauer, however, notes that even the existence of this cabin would not have saved McCandless, since the cabin had been recently vandalized, and anything edible within had been exposed to wild animals and the weather.
McCandless writes his final journal entry on August 12. Barely a week later, he tears a page out of Western author Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, that quotes a poem by Robinson Jeffers, "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours." On the back of this page, McCandless writes, "I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL."
Analysis
Did McCandless finally come to forgive his family, as evinced by the "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED" inscription he wrote toward the end of his life? Perhaps — but note that in all of his writings, there is nothing that explicitly reaches out to his parents or his sister, Carine. McCandless never acknowledges them, even to say goodbye.
Note, too, that Krakauer's theory on McCandless's death, that it was caused by mold on wild potato seeds, is just that: a theory. It is not definitive. To some degree it is beside the point anyway, since one could argue that it wasn't so much starvation that killed McCandless as arrogance and shortsightedness.
The Stampede Trail
Summary
On July 8, 1992, McCandless returns to the bus. He resumes hunting small game and gathering edible berries and wild potatoes, but he is burning more calories than he consumes. He reads Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and finishes Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, writing "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED." — a striking sentiment from someone so relentlessly compelled toward solitude.
On July 30, McCandless makes an ominous entry in his journal: "EXTREMELY WEAK, FAULT OF POT. SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY." Krakauer points out that until this journal entry, nothing suggests that McCandless is in danger of starving to death. Though hungry, he is otherwise in good health. Less than one month later, he will be dead. How?
Wayne Westerberg suggests that McCandless ate some potato seeds he bought in South Dakota; potato seeds can become toxic once they have sprouted. But he would have needed to eat many pounds of these seeds, and he doesn't seem to have done so. There is, however, a wild potato that McCandless may have foraged for — and confused with the similar-looking, and toxic, wild sweet pea.
The author imagines a hungry McCandless mistaking one plant for the other and becoming incapacitated. Already worn down by a subsistence diet, his body wasn't able to stave off the emetic effects of the plant, which ultimately killed him. As time goes on, however, Krakauer begins to doubt this hypothesis.
Some four years after McCandless's death, Krakauer finally discovers that a toxic mold can grow on legumes. "I had an epiphany," he writes. "It wasn't the seeds of the wild potato that had done McCandless in; he was probably killed instead by mold that had been growing on those seeds."
Krakauer describes the effects of poisoning by the mold: "The body is prevented from turning what it eats into a source of usable energy. If you ingest too much . . . you are bound to starve, no matter how much food you put into your stomach."
On August 5, McCandless notes in his journal that he has spent 100 days in the wild. Then he writes "BUT IN WEAKEST CONDITION OF LIFE. DEATH LOOMS AS SERIOUS THREAT." Again the author points out McCandless's folly in not having a topographical map: only six miles south of the bus was a Park Service cabin, equipped with first-aid supplies, bedding, and emergency food — a three-hour walk away. Krakauer, however, notes that even the existence of this cabin would not have saved McCandless, since the cabin had been recently vandalized, and anything edible within had been exposed to wild animals and the weather.
McCandless writes his final journal entry on August 12. Barely a week later, he tears a page out of Western author Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, that quotes a poem by Robinson Jeffers, "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours." On the back of this page, McCandless writes, "I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL."
Analysis
Did McCandless finally come to forgive his family, as evinced by the "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED" inscription he wrote toward the end of his life? Perhaps — but note that in all of his writings, there is nothing that explicitly reaches out to his parents or his sister, Carine. McCandless never acknowledges them, even to say goodbye.
Note, too, that Krakauer's theory on McCandless's death, that it was caused by mold on wild potato seeds, is just that: a theory. It is not definitive. To some degree it is beside the point anyway, since one could argue that it wasn't so much starvation that killed McCandless as arrogance and shortsightedness.