Figurative Language In Happiness, By Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer had the same experience as McCandless with his family and travel to Alaska, but Krakauer knew more about survival and had company in case of any danger. Krakauer compares, “as a young man, I was unlike Mccandless in many important regard… And I suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul” (55). Acknowledging McCandless’s background, Chris left society because, in Krakauer’s point of view, of the “agitation of the soul” and the “similar heedless” of society. McCandless didn’t agree with society’s standards that being successful meant having a well paid occupation, especially when McCandless’s parents enforced it onto him. McCandless truly did not want to uphold the wishes of his parents, for Chris to go to college and get high paying career, but it wasn’t what Chris really wanted, so he left all of his conflicts with his parents and his values or “agitation of the soul” to create a new identity as Alex Supertramp and live in the wild. In today’s modern world, humanity lives in an environment where people are controlled and dependent on others. Chris’s father is someone he despises because of his characteristic of being controlling. Walter becomes controlling over Chris, who pressured him into college. As a result, Chris has an “agitation of the soul” to become independent, and a “heedlessness” for society and had an “intensity” for

In "The Wall," Jean-Paul Sartre uses many literary techniques to convey irony. Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialistic writer, states through his characters and symbolism that life has no value. Through Pablo's decision to "trade' his life, Sartre furthers the irony in the story. Symbolism provides authors with a way to convey an underlying theme or to portray the meaning in an event without explicitly outlining the incident. Sartre employs the symbol of a graveyard to express meaninglessness and nothingness. Emotions can express more than a character's feeling at a particular moment, they can also set a tone for a whole story. The conclusion of laughter brings another example of irony through its contradictory nature to the tone at the end

Krakauer is now an adult person with greater experience of a 23 year old, in where he lived a life like McCandless, which is a person that has the experience to talk about Chris McCandless’ death. Krakauer and McCandless both went into the wilderness of Alaska, but for different reasons. About the same age “I was twenty-three a year younger than McCandless”(Krakauer 135). Krakauer decides to go into the wild because of the idea of claiming of his idol Edward, edward “Climbed not for sport, but to find refuge from the inner torment that framed his existence”(135). Krakauer puts this similarities, and experiences related to nature in order to make himself to appear as a person that knows of what he is talking about. Other than Krakauer adventures

While both Keats and Longfellow often reflect on their own unfulfilled dreams and impending deaths, the poems however contrast on their own dispositions towards death and the future. Here, Keats expresses a fear of not having enough time to accomplish all that he believes he is capable of doing, but as he recognizes the enormity of the world and his own limitations of life, he realizes that his own mortal goals are meaningless in the long run of things. On the other hand, Longfellow speaks of a regret towards his inaction for allowing time to slip away from him in his past and is at a crossroads for the ominous future that looms ahead of him. Through the use of light and dark imagery, and personification, Keats and Longfellow similarly yet also differently, reflect on their own ideas for death and the futures that lay ahead of them.

Furthermore, another example is when Chris’s former co-worker at McDonalds talks about Chris’s time as an employee when he says, “He always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you got on him”(40). This quote describes Chris’s work ethic while he worked at McDonalds, which is very surprising considering past reviews about him. However, he did not work very hard and did not to seem to care one bit about his job at McDonalds because his focus was all on Alaska. Chris’s arrogance is shown in this quote because he has given up on society. He just doesn’t care anymore and all he wants to do is go to Alaska. He is completely ignoring the fact that people are living normal lives and that not everything is about his adventure. Also, Chris is being very selfish because people that are actually a part of society who need things, but he is ignoring everybody that he does not associate with. That works when you are in the wild with no responsibility but in the real world, Chris needed have a sense of urgency. He was ignorant toward society because he does not think and function like everyone else that he was around. Since Chris didn’t fit into society he decided to run away from everything. Krakauer message is present because Chris couldn’t fit into society because he can’t handle responsibility. He could not fit into society and Chris was so ignorant toward society, so he just left the whole thing behind to go start a new life.

One method Krakauer uses is characterization. He uses this technique to draw parallels to himself and the main character. The author convinces the reader just how similar he and Chris are for example, “As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. I disappointed my father in the usual ways. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please” (Krakauer, 134). This quote directly describes how similar Chris and Krakauer are. The author’s goal in writing this story was to tell Chris’s saga and give life to a truly eccentric man. He succeeds by describing how both his and McCandless’s journey had a huge impact on their personality and feelings towards society. During much of his trip, Chris avoided close relationships with people and had very little interaction with other human beings. As the reader learns more about the character and his life, we learn that he matured a great deal on his sojourn. Towards the end of his journey, he realizes, “happiness is only real when shared”. (McCandless, 189) By adding this quote, the reader feels sympathy for Chris because he is in such poor condition. At this point in the novel, the reader feels connected to the main character and his exuberant personality. Krakauer

Furthermore, Krakauer, in the structuring of his book, presents the reader with great amounts of irony, both dramatic and situational. Fairly early in the story, we know that Chris is dead, and Krakauer uses this to an ironical advantage. By already knowing his fate and his background, the reader is able to see the irony is Chris’ death. By dying in a bus in tandem with dying only a couple of hours from civilization, Chris was not truly in the wild. Once again, Krakauer makes the reader sympathize with Chris, for he died not able to fulfill his dream and escape from society. Like in the bus, he was trapped within society, unable to escape no matter how hard he tried. His use of periodic sentences solidifies this idea. Specifically, when Krakauer travels with Chris’ parents to the place of their son’s death.

Krakauer’s first person point of view shows his thoughts and his experiences as he climbs the Devil’s Thumb. “The climbing was so steep and so exposed it made my head spin” (142). Krakauer can easily show his encounter with the wild and what runs through his mind. His first person point of view also symbolizes how McCandless could have felt during his hike on the Stampede Trail. “My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake” (143). Krakauer’s experiences were similar to that of McCandless’s because the Devil’s Thumb is abreast to the Stampede Trail and they went through comparable weather conditions. Not every day does McCandless write in his journal, so Krakauer must show what may have happened to McCandless using his first person view of his past. If Krakauer did not share his

Krakauer begins the novel in medias res, which causes an interruption in the organization and lack of information about McCandless, in which case, he must use syntactical permutation to give all the information necessary and mirror the unknown thoughts of McCandless. Throughout the novel, Krakauer changes points of view to gain different perspectives of McCandless as well as jump to a different point in time as he does by starting chapter two with a narration and description of setting of the Stampede Trail, but then switches in the middle of the chapter to “Thompson made it to the far bank” (Krakauer 11). In addition to chapter two’s deduction, chapter three begins with describing Wayne Westerberg as a “hyperkinetic man with thick shoulders

In Krakauer’s story of fear, pain, and survival, he has ignited effects like suspense and tension, causing the reader to place themselves in his worn-out mountain shoes-mostly relying on devices like foreshadowing, pacing, manipulation of time and exposition as a cause.

The literary allusion that Jon Krakauer provides in this novel points to the reference of Jack London. London was a famous author and wrote many popular books. He was also a very depressed man. However, London was always eager for adventure. Jon Krakauer provided in his novel a piece of Jack London’s writing when giving details about Christopher McCandless’s death. The piece of writing by London was named White Flag. In the writing London wrote he it states, “...There was a hint of laughter in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than silence.” (pg.9) This states that the forest was depressing but had laughter that was not cheerful. The writing also provided detail on how gruesome and harsh the wild can be. This piece of writing

“As a youth, [Krakauer was] told, [he] was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. [He] disappointed [his] father…. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in [him]…confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured [his] undisciplined imagination, [he] pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession, and from the age of seventeen until [his] late twenties that something was mountain climbing” (134).

Krakauer uses research about the life of McCandless in order to establish his ethos and convey his thesis of the novel. When Krakauer presents the information concerning McCandless’s death, he quotes directly from the moose hunters who found him dead and describes the exact setting of the situation. Krakauer beings by explaining the scene at which the moose hunters found him, “A few hundred yards beyond the river the trail disappeared” (Krakauer 12). Krakaurer’s use of description enables readers to visualize the scene better and create a major sense of trust between the author and reader. Krakauer then imbeds a quote directly from the moose hunters that found McCandless’s body who explains that there was “a real bad smell from inside” (Krakauer12). Appealing to the reader’s sense of smell, and also using the perspective of the exact people that found McCandless’s body, establishes a more ethical appeal to the audiences trust in the information the author is presenting. Also, Krakauer cites an exact note found on the bus where McCandless was discovered which states that he is “Near death” (Krakauer 12). The note displayed in the text is written in a different font, implying that the proceeding text is written by a different author, and is also signed by McCandless himself. The research Krakauer did is directly shown here because of his factual evidence. The use of factual information from the scene of the death provides a

Krakauer continues to use emotions through different language choices reflective in varieties of figures of speech to connect his experiences towards his audience, through his inclusion of guilt. Krakauer heavily focuses on the emotional appeal towards survivor's guilt and reflecting this emotional appeal towards his audience in his linguistic choices. The heavy guilt and wondering are directed towards the unknown of Andy Harris, haunting Krakauer continuously. Krakauer uses guilt to say, “My actions - or failures to act - played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris” (283). Krakauer emphasizes pauses to admit to the guilt he feels for not understanding what happened to Andy, as well as to think about the interactions he had to comprehend why the death has occurred. The use of figures of speech through pauses and emphasizing his “failures to act” shows how Krakauer is trying to understand the death of a significant figure in his life. The uncertainty of views when tracing his steps on how Harris’s death results from the small blame upon only Krakauer, rather than on the other dangerous factors. He continues to affirm his guilt, “...the stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden

This technique may also be representative of the simplicity of human life, “Man, mentally, was one… Man said, ‘The Universe is dying’”. The sentence clauses here referenced, are like many found throughout the story. The succinctness of them are relative to human life, and while this comparison is very literal in this example, many more are less so, “Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time”, the comparison can still be understood, but is less apparent. In this sentence of only a few words, humanity and the rest of the world has disappeared.