Afterward + Additional Materials

Initially reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the reader is led to think that Christopher McCandless is some random guy that wanted to go into the Alaskan woods to escape reality. When looking into the actual reason for McCandless’s seeming unprepared adventure, you start to realise the in-depth reason why he embarked on this journey.

My first thoughts on why McCandless wanted to escape was because of his parents. I have mentioned this in my previous post Ch 15-Ep saying, “With McCandless’s life when he was younger seemingly a fraud, with his father living a double life, McCandless’s reaction his entire life was probably to get away, get away, and get away due to the awful environment he no longer trusted. McCandless took this to the extreme and went into the Alaskan wilderness while getting away and might have taken it a bit too far.” But after reading the Forward by Krauker, it only further confirmed my theory. When Krakauer was interviewing McCandless’s sister, he states “Chris’s seemingly unexplainable behavior during the final years of his life was in fact explained by the volatile dynamics of the McCandless family while he was growing up.” (Krakauer xv) After saying this, it further dives into the fact that there were struggles of abuse that Carine (Chris’s sister) did not want shared at the time of the release of Into the Wild, but Krakauer very subtly hinted to in the novel. Even an article by Dylan Skurka saying that Chris being selfish by distancing himself from his family is simply a “myth”. His family was never fully supportive in the first place by being abusive.

Another idea that these external resources helped me get a different perspective on was Krakauer’s involvement in the novel. When Krakauer put his personal stories in the novel around chapter 15, it really did improve the reader’s ability to understand McCandless’s reason for exploring the Alaskan bush. When Dylan Skurka wrote Into the Wild: What Chris McCandless’s Story Reveals About Ourselves, he says “Almost as if Jon’s spirit was reincarnated into Chris’s body, whenever I read this passage I get the impression that the connection between the two men is rooted in how they shared the same underlying motivation to go off on their respective journeys: that in conquering their obstacles in the world, they believe that they could silence the excruciating turbulence within themselves.” and later stating that when we look at their journeys through this lens, it doesn't make McCandless, or even Krakauer's story seem so outlandish. Maybe instead of thinking of McCandless as completely unprepared and selfish, we can understand the true reasoning, and how everyone is always trying to conquer their own obstacles in their own journey, just in a different way. 

These external materials help improve understanding of not just why McCandless wanted to explore the Alaskan wilderness, but also why Krakauer produced the novel in the way he did, as well as the forward. The materials also further confirmed many of my thoughts about McCandless, such as how awful his family life was, but with his family life being worse than pictured in the novel. These other resources are important to read to get full context to the life of Christopher McCandless.