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05/10/2025 9:52 pm
I think that when Krakeuer is talking about McCandless, he is being too forgiving of him. Why I believe that Krakauer is being forgiving towards McCandless is that in the author's note of the book, Krakauer says that he, “won’t claim to be an impartial biographer.” Even though he claimed he wasn’t going to be impartial, it still hurts the narrative and story of Chris McCandless, and makes it hard to decipher whether that was who Chris really was or Krakauer's viewpoint of Chris. As we see throughout the book, the more he talks about Chris’s life, the more he becomes affectionate towards McCandless. His readers even notice, because when they sent him mail about his article, someone wrote about how, “ ‘Krakauer is a kook if he doesn’t think Chris ‘Alexander Supertramp’ McCandless was a kook.’ ” (Krakauer, 71). This helps show that Readers of Krakauer’s paper believed that McCandless was a kook for going on this adventure being unprepared. But Krakauer doesn’t believe that and his narrative is just upsetting readers more. I think that Krakauer’s views towards McCandless are different from mine. While Krakauer believes that he was courageous and an idealist, I see him more as unprepared and overconfident, like Nick Jans. I can understand why he could possibly leave everything to connect with nature, but the way he went about it and his confidence that nothing could go wrong put him in a bad light for me. It’s not that I hate his character because Krakauer and all the people he interviewed showed him as this quiet, but kind person; I just believe that the way he dove into this life with no experience or plans shows that he doesn't know what he was doing. So while Krakauer and I have some similarities towards McCandless, we mainly differ between if McCandless was courageous or underprepared.
15/10/2025 11:23 am
I like that you can see why McCandless wanted to leave everything behind, you just don't like how he went about it. The fact that you're trying to understand why he did what he did, shows me that you don't just see everything in black and white. This did make me realize how abruptly he left his family with no explanation and how that's unfair to them. I feel like a more broad point of view would be why he left without telling them. I know it's not in this book, but his sister touches more upon their family life in her book which I've read, and that gives a much better understanding of why he did what he did. I know it would extend this unit longer but I think we should read that book since a lot of people probably are interpreting that his family did no wrong, when they were a huge contributor of why he did this in the first place. I wonder if your opinions would be different after hearing her side of the story.
15/10/2025 9:56 pm
I totally get what you’re saying about Krakauer being way too forgiving. Sometimes it feels like he’s kind of in love with Chris’s story and forgets to be fair. I can see why people call Chris a kook since he wasn’t really ready for what he got into honestly kind of reckless. But like you said, he wasn’t a bad guy, just someone who didn’t really get how risky it was. I think it’s cool how you see him as overconfident while Krakauer thinks he was brave.
20/10/2025 1:32 pm
I like the quote you added because it also has me thinking the same way and that he says this but in the book it shows otherwise. Everyone else thinks that Chris is a "Kook' but Krakauer seems to just admire and show affection towards Chris. I agree with what you said about him just going out into the wild and not having a plan or any plan on what to do. I feel he was definitely outrageous and under prepared.
