Review: 'Into the wild' by Jon Krakauer

Title: Into the wild

Writer: Jon Krakauer

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 224

Year: 2011

IBSN-13: 978-0330351690

Price: 10.68€ (Paperback Amazon)

Mark: 8/10

SYNOPSIS

Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild examines true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later, internationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to explore the outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature. A 2007 film adaptation of Into the Wild was directed by Sean Penn and starred Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart.

PERSONAL ASSESSMENT

JUSTIFIACTION

I think that, as a lot of people have done, I saw the film before reading the book. I usually wait for reading the book first and then I watch the film, but when that film came to me I didn’t know that there was a book. I saw the film thousands of times and I have a love-hate relationship with it, and it happened to me with the book too. This book has been in my wishlist for years, but I have never bought it. One day I found out that one of my friends has it and asked her (like three or four years ago) to lent it to me, but she always forgets. So, this year she decided to give me the english version of the book because of my birthday. Thus, when I finished the book I was reading I submerse in this book.

PLOT

The book is like a long newspaper article. In it Jon talks about the adventures of Chris McCandless -or Alex Supertramp- from the time when he was graduated, and he left everything behind to set out on a trip and, even though that he doesn’t admit it, to discover himself until SPOLIER his death SPOILER CLOSED. Jon intertwine the Chris’ diary entries with the tales of the people who spent those days with him, with his own experiences, with other similar cases and with his own (Jon’s) suppositions.

ATMOSPHERE AND WRITING STYLE

Here comes the problem. His is a press writing style, that’s why it doesn’t have the ‘novel’ form. He leaps backward and forward in each chapter, he intertwines his own reflections, stories of him and other hikers that died. I thought that it was going to be more like a novel, with the interviews to the people who met Alex along his trip. I think that it would have been easier to be submerse in the history because all that he had added, in one hand it helps you to understand the history but, in the other hand it gets you away from that empathy feeling.

Something that I like about the book was the beginning of the chapters, a lot of them have maps of the place with the important spots marked, and every chapter starts too with a quote related to the theme that that chapter was going to talk about.

GENERAL COMMENT

I general, I like the history. I empathize with Chris to an extent, because a lot of his actions seemed irresponsible to me. I understand his breakup with the world where we live, but he finds out that no matter how much we hate the system, we will always be a part of it. The solution to that is not to break away and became a hermit, if you don’t like the system then fight to change it. But really, he gave everything up because he wanted to find himself or just as a way of punishing his family? Because, not matter how bad is your relationship with your parents, you can’t leave home for years and not contact them, and besides when they receive news from you are to discover that SPOLIER you are dead. SPOLIER CLOSED. That is not fair. The adventure he is living is beautiful, the people he meets are very nice, it makes you wanna grab your backpack with few books and clothes and leave everything behind. But being more trained. What you can’t do is, without any knowledge of plants or botany, to take a book from the library and believe yourself to be an expert. You can’t go to the mountains without any preparation or knowledge and EVEN WITHOUT A MAP OF THE PLACE. What happened to him was because of lack of maps. Because every person knows that in summer (especially in Alaska, for fuck’s shake) the heat produces the melting of the ice and the swelling of the rivers. We don’t need a master’s degree to know that. And the worst part of it? SPOLIER He realized that he wanted to come back to his family! SPOLIER CLOSED. And quoting the book ‘happiness is only real when shared’.

So, to sum up, on one side I admire him for having the courage to leave everything behind and, on the other side he pisses me off because he was so irresponsible and arrogant.

-Saru