Analysis of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Analysis of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild - Essay Example These privileges include a loving family, a college degree, a car that he adored as well as money worth $25,000 in his savings account (Krakauer 6). This spurs the question as to why and how would such a young man shut all contact with his parents and family, abandon his vehicle, give out all his money, and leave to spend the next two years as a lonely and homeless drifter. Prior to all this prestige, Chris abandons them, and ventures into the unknown world to look for the rare adventurous life without fully planning and preparing for it. This paper will specifically outline how the young man bearing the name Chris McCandless related with nature during his adventures especially in the wilderness and how the nature treated him back. Chris's McCandless relationship with nature as presented in the film Alaska has long been a magnet that attracts dreamers and misfits, and people who think that their miserable shortcomings will be patched up by wild adventure. Chris experienced the same i llusion because he believed that the wilderness was the best destination. McCandless saw the wilderness as a place free from modern society and its evils as well as a purer state where he could find his identity, and be completely free (Krakauer 13). However, it is not true that the real experience of day-to-day living in the wilderness is as real as Chris and others like him to imagine. The unreality of the wild escapades is shown by Chris’s relationship with nature, which turned out to be unpredictable because at one time the nature seemed very soothing while at other times the same nature was cruel. In the beginning of his adventure, nature attracted McCandless with rare relaxation when he came across natural thermal pools on the Alaskan Highway. Chris bathed in the soothing water and rested in this particular destination as he pondered his next move (Krakauer 27). On the third day, nature presented Chris with the unexpected by offering him a friend named Alex who too was attracted by the pool that had become Chris’s companion for the few days that Chris had remained in the pool next to the highway. However, nature’s reality began to bite as McCandless spent a lot of time trying to find food to keep his soul alive so that he had time to consciously appreciate the wilderness and its adventures as anticipated before. The lack of food depicts itself through his written journal which consists of lists of the food that he found and ate every day. For a period of six weeks, Chris feasted regularly on spruce grouse, squirrel, duck, goose, and porcupine. He survived by fate because he had to try all means to hunt in order to get food, and the hunting task in itself was a tedious experience that exhausted Chris (Krakauer 86). Prior to food and hunting, nature did not offer Chris the desired satisfaction because he walked for more than five hundred miles towards the tidewater, but later reconsidered his plans and came back to where he had spotted the bus and settled there. Surprisingly, Chris’s settlement was not for long because a few weeks later, he changed his mind and decided to go elsewhere. However, the unpredicted nature was at it again and Chris’s journey was cut short by the flooded river (Krakauer 245). He was a weak swimmer and all he could do was turn back to his unsatisfying environment, and unwillingly Chris had to obey nature by turning back to his bus that had become his home. The reason why Chris seems dissatisfied with nature is because he