Use of Literary Techniques in Into The Wild, by John Krakauer

In conclusion, krakauer has a bias towards chris’s life story. From chris’s life matching his own in many ways to how carine requested some of chris’s life to not be disclosed. Each bias keeps the book from telling a completely truthful depiction of chris mccandless’s

In the author's notes he put “Through most of the book, I have tried--and largely succeeded, I think to--to minimize my authorial presence. But let the reader be warned: I interrupt McCandless’s story with fragments of a narrative drawn from my own youth. I do so in the hope that my experiences will throw some oblique light on the enigma of Chris McCandless”(Krakauer 2). By telling us that he will add some stories of his own make us realize that Krakauer has some relation with McCandless and it make us think that this book is more believable. In the book when he tells us that Chris just died for a simple mistake and tries to relate it to himself by telling the story of how he started to realized that going into the wilderness will change his life he emphasizes“I would go to Alaska, ski inland from the sea across thirty miles of glacial ice, and ascend this mighty nordwand. I decide, moreover, to do it alone. ” Just like McCandless, Krakauer had a lot in common with him, they both went into the wild of Alaska, which gives a lot of experience to krakauer to talk about McCandless death. In order for Krakauer to make McCandless not a crazy kid he made some other similarities between McCandless and some other people that died, with a lot of characteristics similar to McCandless and himself. Krakauer is the ideal person to criticate

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.

He does this in order to question the status quo of society, ultimately coinciding with Miller’s third criteria of a tragedy. Miller defines that a tragic hero’s struggle “must enlighten the reader by questioning the status quo of our society and pointing out that which limits humankind’s realization of dignity, identity, and freedom”(Miller). McCandless’ personality has a strong effect on drawing in others to be interested in his aspirations. Krakauer paints this emotional grip through the story of Ron, an 81 year old man who meets Chris McCandless and becomes drawn into his lifestyle. Being heartbroken when left without notice by McCandless, Ron is brought into this daring lifestyle when he receives a letter from Chris, saying “we must have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it”(Krakauer 57). Before meeting McCandless, Krakauer illustrates Ron as an individual who has a routine focus of working from night until day, and bases life off of monetary value. The new type of lifestyle that Ron sees through Chris leads to him having the desire to recraft his whole vision of life

Krakauer uses long descriptions of Chris such as that he “was wearing a blue sweatshirt printed with the logo of a Santa Barbara towing company…” (Krakauer 99). This random detailed image of Chris is not alone. Throughout the entire novel, Krakauer gives very detailed descriptions of Chris in order to help readers visualize who Chris is as a person. The long and periodic sentences such as when Krakauer explains how during his adventures, “Near the end of his trip, it turned out, Chris had gotten lost in the Mojave Desert and had nearly succumbed to dehydration” (Krakauer 118). In this long and periodic sentence, Krakauer describes another part of Chris’s journey in great detail. The long periodic sentences help to show the complexity of Chris’s death, and they help to explain that there is a long and complex journey to his death.

People go into many things to try to escape their life. Some people start eating a lot, while other stop. Some people go into drugs, while others start drinking. Some people go into depression, while others are allured to take high risk actions. Maybe Christopher McCandless took this action because his relationship with his dad was not the best. Krakauer associated his relationship with his father to McCandless and his dad. “Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please” (Krakauer 134). Krakauer feels the pressure to succeed and the desire to rebel, because his father constantly pushed him to perfection, like McCandless father. Chris could no longer deal with his life and spitefully left everything he knew for his dad’s high expectations. “I got into my head to climb a mountain called the Devils Thumb” (Krakauer 134). To show his father he can do it, he revealed in the book his thought processes during the climb. At the end he came to the conclusion that his method of thinking could have killed him something that ultimately happened to McCandless. To sum it up, by comparing his own and other people’s experiences the author Jon Krakauer appeal to pathos to give a little perspective on why Chris McCandless is not a young foolish kid as several people assume he is.

First, and the most noticeable, is Krakauer’s use of narration. The main purpose for writing this book was to tell the full truth of McCandless’ journey and in parallel, clear his reputation of a irrational young man. Krakauer wanted to show the reader that McCandless was not an arrogant kid that had outrageous ambitions to trek through Alaska, and one way he did this was by emphasizing McCandless’ intelligence through the use of narration by friends and family members. “Alex was Big on the Classics: Dickens, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Jack London. London was his favorite. He’d try to convince

Krakauer focus on the life that McCandless had when he decided to leave from his old life because it reflects the good thing that he did while he was on his journey. When McCandless left his old life he meet franks, Westerburg and a lot of other people in where he changed their life. After Frank got the news from the hitchhikers Franz told Krakauer “I turned my van around, drove back to the store, and bought a bottle of whiskey. And then went into the desert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me sick.

While talking about Chris and himself Krakauer stated “And i suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul” pg 155 .Throughout the book many people criticized Chris for actions. Most viewed Chris as just ignorant person who taught they could make it in the woods. Krakauer could understand Chris better than most , because of how similar their life story is. Krakauer recognized that him Chris were different because he didn’t “ posses Chris’s intellect nor his lofty ideals”.

In my opinion I believe the authors main point in this essay was to vindicate anything that Chris McCandless did in his life. When reading I could definitely sense Krakauers natural liking for McCandless. He was sympathetic to McCandless, based on Krakauers sense of a shared experience in their youth and up until McCandless eventual death and Krakauers perceived near death experience on the Devils Thumb.

After creating a suspenseful atmosphere in one paragraph, Krakauer will bring back his laid back persona, making sarcastic jokes about how “a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn’t the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state” (4). With its cordial feel, Krakauer’s diction makes readers feel as though they were good friends with McCandless while he was alive. Chris’s decisions, morals, and values can seem quite enigmatic to those who do not truly understand what McCandless was looking for in life, but Krakauer makes sure his audience is well aware that McCandless yearned for “excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice [himself] for [his] love” (15). Knowing the boy’s qualities and ambitions in life helps readers feel more connected to Krakauer’s writing; it makes the audience eager to learn more about McCandless’s

When appealing to logos, one strategy Krakauer used was shedding light on McCandless’s personality traits. He did this by characterizing Chris as not just the society defying, law disregarding young man that many have thought him as. This strategy used by Jon portraying Chris McCandless in an almost positive light is supported

Krakauer believes that Chris McCandless had a good reason on why he wanted to venture into the wild. Krakauer sees many similarities between himself and McCandless. One of these similarities is the relationships they had between themselves and their own fathers. Krakauer describes his father as, “ambitious in the extreme, and like Walt McCandless, his aspirations extended to his progeny” (Krakauer 147). Krakauer believes that Chris McCandless left because of his life at home. The expectations that came placed by his father’s successes and the expectations other people had of him could have made him run away. His life at home could have made him want to leave and survive on his own. Krakauer might see this as a brave and great action to take, but just packing up and leaving was a selfish thing to

However Krakauer adds his own opinion subtly throughout the book which sways the readers own opinion to make him appear to be brave and less reckless. Towards the end of his journey he took a final picture. “Because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will let him down—it’s not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.” He adds his own opinion on Chris’s feelings and defends his pain that he was truly feeling behind his appearance in the

Chris’s discovery of his father’s double life explains his distant personality towards his friends and family. The “deep wounds” that were inflicted on Chris when he discovered his father’s second life was fueled by the feeling of betrayal. Chris’s relationship with his father was already complicated and disturbed, so the discovery of the true reason his parents separated permanently destroyed what was left of his relationship with his father. From that point on, Chris’s feelings towards other people became more reserved, cutting any form of communication with his parents, and became a more mysterious and complex figure. Here, Krakauer portrays Chris as a brooding character, letting his dark emotions build and build without consulting anyone,