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16/11/2025 11:55 am
I believe that Krauker’s goal in writing this book was to understand what motivated Chris McCandless to set off into the wild, and to try to tell his story as true as he could. After hearing a lot of negative perspectives on what happened to McCandless, I think that he really wanted to try to see the good in what he did. To not look at it in black and white as a man who was incompetent and died because of it. But to look at McCandless as a person, who just wanted to break free of society and expectations, and live his life to the fullest.
I appreciate that Krauker includes in this book the feelings he has about the people who judged McCandless. How none of them ever faced what he did, and the most they’ve ever been out in the wilderness the way he was, was maybe a week. Nobody else has the confidence that McCandless had. People talk about how disgusting society and the world is, but never do anything about it. They stay in the bubble that was made for them, so they have no place to judge people who didn’t want to stay in a box the way they did.
If this is the goal Krauker had, I think he achieved it very nicely. He made sure to hear from everyone close to McCandless. To visit the places where he stayed, or just passed through. He really put his all into inserting himself into McCandless’s life, and seeing everything and everyone he saw. If he had just done research by looking things up in books and using little to no evidence, this book wouldn’t be as successful as it is today. And people wouldn’t know McCandless’s story the way they do now.
17/11/2025 12:30 am
I loved how you discussed the other side of the story. Because while this book is very well written and acclaimed, it doesn’t mean that people loved Krakauer or McCandless. Krakauer was vocal about this in his book, saying how people called both of them crazy, but it didn’t bother him at all. I liked how you said your beliefs on this matter and that if anyone were to be in McCandless’s shoes for just a day towards the end of him, they wouldn’t have said all the negative opinions about McCandless.
You discussed how you believed Krakauer’s main message in this book was about how he was curious about why McCandless did what he did, and I totally agree with you on that. We can never know for sure why McCandless decided to run away and have this big adventure, but without Krakauer's dedication towards McCandless, he can shed light on the side of the story that isn’t frequently shown in articles. Krakauer was able to show us readers a good possible explanation of why he had this adventure; without knowing why he ran away, we wouldn’t have gotten to read about the remarkable man McCandless was to the people he met.
Throughout the novel, we don’t hear a lot about how societal norms, unless it’s discussed in why McCandless ran away. I believe that the pressures and stress of society can make people want to escape it all and find a new life for themselves, and how disgusting it can be. Even though society can be bad and indirectly contribute to McCandless's death, perhaps it isn’t the worst. To put it into a broader context, maybe society isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Perhaps there is more to society than people let on.
You discussed how you liked how Krakauer put himself into the story by visiting all these different places and meeting people who were touched by McCandless somewhere down the road. While Krakauer does a very good job being able to iincorporatinghimself into his novel, it makes me wonder. Why did this tactic work well for Krakauer? When this is usually unheard of in articles or moves like this. Would the book have been better if he hadn’t included himself?
