Alyssa Frank
English 102A
Dr. LaFauci
9 December 2010
From “Into the Wild” to “Into Hollywood”
How many times has Hollywood taken a true story and turned it into something different? Hollywood took Chris McCandless’s story and turned it into an overdramatic work of art. Unlike Krakauer’s nonfiction best seller Into the Wild, the movie Into the Wild by Sean Penn overemphasizes ideas or fails to include crucial evidence which twists the viewers understanding of Chris McCandless’s life. The movie overemphasizes Chris’s parents’ relationship and the effect it has on him, creates a love interest for him in “Slab City”, and fails to mention Chris’s knowledge of the wild. Sean Penn’s film skews how people will remember Chris
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Krakauer describes Chris’s knowledge of edible plants and it is also evident in his journals, whereas Penn reveals a lack of knowledge as the cause of Chris’s death. The movie depicts Chris’s death to occur because he could not identify the difference between two similar plants, one poisonous and one not. One may argue that Chris died because he picked the wrong seeds, but that is not the case. Krakauer has done extensive research on the two types of plants and concluded that Chris knew the difference between plants since he had been harvesting the roots and seeds all summer. In reality, it was not that Chris identified the seeds wrong but that he ate the seeds late in the season when the seeds had contained toxic alkaloids or had contained mold. This is a mistake that most people, except trained botanists, could make. But for Chris it ultimately led to his death.
Chris McCandless deserted life as he knew it to get away from his parents, gain his own freedom, and explore nature like the authors he idolized, but the book does not mention that he left in order to find love. The movie presents a love interest for Chris during his visit to “Slab City”. This relationship was not found in Chris’s journal as a reason for his exploration. Chris was looking for freedom and a piece of mind, not a girl to take home with him. Hollywood places relationships in movies just to
THe book starts when billy sees down the street a wild dog fight and sees that other dogs re ganging up on a red bone hound. After billy saves the do he takes the dog home to take care of the dogs injures and then he has a flashback whenhe had 2 red bone hounds. He remembers how the dogs affected him for the best when he won the dog show and also won the hunting contest. He also has the memori of when his dog died and could not understand why his dog died. "If he gave them to me, then why did he take them away?' I asked. 'Billy, your mother and i had decided not to seperate you from your dogs. we knew how much you loved them. We decided that when we moved to town we'd leave you here with your grandpa for a while. He needs help anyways. BUt
This acknowledgement is based on assumption, but it is very sound assumption. No one truly knows how Chris McCandless died. Krakauer thinks that McCandless’ cause of death was possibly a mold known as R. leguminicola which may have contaminated his seeds. Out of all the possible causes of death, this cause seems to be the most plausible. If Krakauer’s thought was the cause of McCandless’ death, it would prove that McCandless was not “a reckless idiot” (iii). Rather it shows that “McCandless simply had the misfortune to eat moldy seeds” (194). This also means that “he didn’t carelessly confuse one species with another” and that “the guy wasn’t quite as reckless or incompetent as he [had] been made out to be” (194). Other theories as to how McCandless died include the possibility of eating a poisonous potato plant or even the toxicity from a wild plant’s seeds. The fact that makes Krakauer’s idea the most plausible is he is able to go through each of the theories and logically assess the given facts until he has made it seem as if that particular theory was not even possible to begin with. All of the other theories that the reader is presented with have one thing in common. In order to be true, they require that McCandless be “a reckless idiot” (iii). However, Krakauer breaks down every other plausible death theory until there is only one left. Coincidentally it is the only theory that, if true, would prove that McCandless was
Chris was a bright young man, yet he could not realize that the moistness will only encourage bacteria to grow, he was desperate for food, thus bringing attention to his inability to be prepared and his foolishness. The moldy seeds led to Chris’s starvation, yet his lack of knowledge and preparation among his inability to be co-dependent upon someone leads as reason to believe that Chris
However, I do not believe that the plant McCandless ate right before death was the cause alone of his demise, I do believe that his diet did play a role in this death. Obviously he died from starvation because his body was not getting enough nutrients to turn into energy. “He appears dangerously malnourished weeks before ingesting the seeds that Krakauer claims killed him” (Thayer). Whether it was the seeds that killed him, the possible mold that Krakauer describes on pages 193-195, or just the lack of nutrients and calories, he still made the mistake of ingesting too many wild potato seeds and roots at one time without enough variety of foods. “An examination of Chris’s journal shows that he went without food on many days and almost always had an extreme caloric deficit. His starvation clearly began on April 28, not July 30 as Krakauer proposes” (Thayer). This proves to be the most solid explanation on Chris McCandless’s death. Chris was not crazy because he starved or because he got stuck in a place with limited access points. Bad luck and unthought through plans are what causes his starvation and lead to his death.
McCandless probably never thought he would die in an abandoned bus after eat some moldy seeds. But at the time of his death, there was probably no where or reason he would rather die. This is because he found himself in Alaska. On the surface it may seems that Chris got nothing from going to Fairbanks, Alaska. However, Chris got everything and lost nothing.
Chris McCandless came from a very different lifestyle compared to that of Perry Smith and the Clutters. He was obedient and listened to his parents for the most part. However, Krakauer viewed McCandless’s parents as too demanding and ultimately implies that part of his death was brought on by his parents. Chris’s relationship with his father was stressed at best and Krakauer equally “believe[s] we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with our fathers. And I suspect we had similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul" (159). Chris was a highly opinionated and willful young man with little room for negotiation with his father sharing those same qualities. His criticism towards his parents eventually turned to outright anger, and after his father’s secret double life is revealed Chris begins viewing his father as a
In nature, Chris focused only on himself and survival, rather than his troubles at home, the needs of others, or the standards of society. In a way, he was forced to go into the outdoors because of these poor relationships and inner conflicts within himself. Although Chris sought nature to help him, it destroyed him. He never returned from Alaska to put into practice what he had finally learned about himself and his need for others. Nature and his plan had worked against him, since, he eventually died of starvation.
In the brighter spectrum of Mr. Chris McCandless, is his deep and intellectual personality, shining through on most every occasion with cynical value or an interesting opinion every now and then. In Chris’s deep scholarly thought he decides to give up many things for his own self righteousness in attemp to make himself free of any evil or distraction as well as anything that may hold him down. As a younger boy in high school he proved his good Samaritan self by spending weekends taking to the the streets, spending nights with prostitutes, the homeless, and the addicts, feeding them and experiencing a little of what they felt. As I mentioned before he gave up what he thought would ruin his dreams and soil his life, he rid his life of luxury and wealth along with long-term relationships with people. As one of the things that he had apparently given up was the desire of sex and all of it’s evils, and proclaimed that his need was much to great for something so petty. Truly I believe traveling as a child with his family engineered a mind set within Chris that made him feel as if familiarity was just a weight holding him down from the flight toward his dreams. He also thought that being lost in such a superficial and trivial society could help no one
Chris McCandless was possessed by a nomadic existence and was trying to share his principle of life to his friend by telling that the truth about life was to explore the nature. Chris McCandless's last letter to Wayne revealed his true passion of nature. "This is the last you shall hear from me...I now walk into the wild"(pg 69). Some people concluded that it was Chris McCandless's suicide letter. However, in my opinion, Chris McCandless was just a victim of his own ego, pride and confidence that made him to neglect basic precautions that keep one person alive. He was controlled by his own delusions and that made him eager to test himself into strenuousness which proved fatal to him.
Although many historical filmmakers alter some events and use fiction as a tool in providing an accurate historical representation, the makers of “The
In the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer writes about Christopher McCandless, a young man who drops everything in his life to go travel throughout the states and end up in Alaska to find the truth to his questions. But did Chris find the truth he desperately desired? Some would say that McCandless did, other would say that he has wasted his time and was being ignorant and stupid. I agree with the author, Jon Krakauer, that Christopher McCandless was not a crazy lunatic, a sociopath, or an outcast because he had made lots of friends while traveling, but there were times when Chris was incompetent, even though he managed to stay alive for quite awhile. Christopher McCandless had a pretty normal childhood.
I think he just wanted to pursue life in a different way. Chris was not seeing life the way anyone else was so he decided to brush off into the wild and be free on his own. Though he did not survive he was still a very bright, arrogant human being. Shaun Callarman states, “He had no common sense, and he had no business going into Alaska with his Romantic silliness.” Chris knew going into the wild that he did not have much survival skills but that did not stop him from doing what he wanted to do because he did not care about society and was just completely over everything which was why he made the move to the wilderness. This clearly shows us that Chris did not have much common sense. If he had better survival skills and common sense he probably would have known not to eat that poisonous berry. It was his dream to be in the wild and he decided to pursue it. I respect his decisions and i personally believe it was a good decision other than the fact of him dying. He made the infinitive decision to do all of this so why stop
The novel Into the Wild is a nonfiction novel published by Jon Krakauer who investigated the life and death of a free spirited individual named Christopher McCandless. McCandless was a recent Emory University graduate who sought to suck the marrow out of life through an independent experience in nature and purposely sought to this experience in the rawest form of supplies. He was found dead in August of 1992 in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. For the sake of his journey, he purposely didn't bring an adequate amount of food or supplies. Consequently, those who read of his actions wonder what evoked him to live the way he
The Call of the Wild, on the surface, is a story about Buck, a four- year old dog that is part Shepherd and part St. Bernard. More importantly, it is a naturalistic tale about the survival of the fittest in nature. Throughout the novel, Buck proves that he is fit and can endure the law of the club, the law of the fang, and the laws of nature.
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, is a classic piece of American literature. The novel follows the life of a dog named Buck as his world changes and in turn forces him to become an entirely new dog. Cruel circumstances require Buck to lose his carefree attitude and somewhat peaceful outlook on life. Love then enters his life and causes him to see life through new eyes. In the end, however, he must choose between the master he loves or the wildness he belongs in.