Book Review - Into the Wild By Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild is a journey of a confused man with pathetic priorities heading into the wilderness completely unprepared, inevitably he died. Yet his journey, and how he perished, is widely unknown and disputed. It is the creative author, Jon Krakauer’s job to use this man’s journals and follow his camps to find out what happened and write his story. He outlines the journey chronologically in the way someone would write an adventure novel, as if it is all had happened and it was a re-telling. The man who perished, Christopher Johnson McCandless, starts his journey when he graduated Emory University in Atlanta. He decided to spend his summer traveling in his car. Then when he mails his final college transcript away, he sends a letter to his family saying, “Hey, I’m not coming home and you’ll probably never hear or see me again <3”. So, he decides to throw himself into the wilderness, with what little money and supplies he has. Taking small jobs and shelter along the way. The story is his journey, not his destination, which is a really interesting way to approach a book. In chapter 8 of the story, a reader commented to the newspaper that posted about McCandless’s story states “Why would anyone intending to 'live off the land for a few months' forget Boy Scout rule number one: Be Prepared?” (71)This is interesting because it did a really swell job of making McCandless look like an stubborn fool, which is not something very disputed at this point in time. But, beyond the story, it really shows that these petty rules that the boy scouts make actually mean something; anything could save you. Being prepared could mean anything as simple as having a map. All in all, the book was well written and riveting, unfortunately the honours student savant that McCandless was supposed to be happened to be little less sensible than you would think someone of such a high caliber would be. He would not bring something so simple that could have saved his life in many ways.

Final Thoughts: Pick it up if you want a short book that has some interesting meanings and a bit of adventure, sadness, and sleuthing for your own opinions of what happened (if you're up to it).