Into the Wild 10-14

I find it very ethical that Krakauer include his own opinion in the story. Into The Wild is already a unique book. It’s about the life of Chris Mccandless but it’s also based on the author’s thoughts and opinions on him. It’s only fair that Krakauer shares his own story because it helps the reader understand why he had the passion to write a book about someone like Chris.

I find the Interruption to be helpful because it not only breaks away from the main storyline, but you feel more connected to Krakauer as a reader. Now not every author should have a chapter in their book dedicated to themselves, especially a book in third person, but in this case Krakauer is very comparable to Chris as a young man and it makes the story stronger

I found this chapter surprising. I had to go back and reread part of the start of the chapter, I wasn’t sure if it was a big quote from Chris or Krakauer who was talking. I liked this chapter, Krakauer did a great job keeping his story lined up with the overall theme. I wouldn’t call it a waste of time for the reader either, Krakauer already wrote two other chapters about young people other than Chris that expeditions in Alaska. It makes sense that he put his own story in his book.

I personally don’t like Krakauer’s random insertion of a long personal example. It does reveal what makes him qualified to write about McCandless in a way, but other than that it wasn’t very necessary. I think that honestly, even smaller anecdotes about his travels would be more acceptable but the fact he dedicated two whole chapters to himself was shocking and a bit frustrating. From Krakauer’s perspective, I get that he thought the audience would need his experience with the wild and exploration to better understand Christopher. However, I feel the small anecdotes shared about the many other men who wandered into the wilderness were much more informational and important than Krakauer’s. Part of me wonders if Krakauer simply wanted an excuse to share about himself. One quote in particular that frustrated me was, “To a self-possessed young man inebriated with the unfolding drama if his own life, all of this held enormous appeal” (Krakauer 138). Something about the way Krakauer writes about himself annoys me. The audience is reading to hear about Christopher McCandless, and if this adventerous-and-bright-young-man-who-wonders-into-the-wilderness trope is as uncommon as Krakauer emphasizes throughout the book, no one especially wants to hear his story. Its much less interesting and drags the story out. In fact, I feel as though I retained almost nothing from his story due to the wordy and verbose way he writes about his travels, ”A madrigal of creaks and sharp reports–the sort of protest a large fir limb makes when it’s slowly bent to the breaking point– served as a reminder that it is the nature of the glaciers to move, the habit of seracs to topple” (Krakauer 139). It took me around five times to reread that sentence to understand the weird and figurative way he writes. I would 100% never write like this, even if I had a relevant story to share. You do not just drop towards the end of the book that you did the same thing the main character did with the “only” difference being you survived. It was simply a pointless detail and in my honest opinion, I hope he doesn’t bother to include any more personal narratives for the rest of the book. I’m not sure what kind of stylistic choice he was trying to make, but he made the wrong one.

If what the author was saying is related to the topic of the story, possibly. But you dont want to stir too far away from the story because its not the authors story.I feel like the author told too much of his story, taking the focus away from the storu about Chris McCandless. What was helpful was that he was talking about himself, being similar to Chris and felt the same way as him. “Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please.” (134) Him and Chris always felt like they were always disappointing their fathers. TheI was twenty three,a year younger than Chris McCandelesswhen he walked into the Alaskan bush.” (135) He got into depth about his story, which was cool but was taking away from the main story being told.

Krakauer Is arrogant and self absorbed I believe that if he wanted to write about his experiences he should have made a separate story. It is somewhat helpful to help readers to create a sense of feeling and a point of view of McCandless, but overall it is unneeded. ¨I decided to do it alone. I was twenty-three, a year younger than Chris McCandeless.¨ (pg 135) This quote is proof of Krakauer making this story about himself. This is just one of the moments when Krakauer goes on about HIS experiences. Nobody cares about his story, he should just create a separate book.

The way he used ¨I¨ was so overwhelming, he used it so much and it felt like I was reading something I would write in middle school. It was incredibly shocking to see all the ¨I´s.¨ It definitely slowed down the momentum, and made the book very hard to read. If I was writing this story and felt I had a connection with McCandeless I wouldn't make the book about myself, and would just keep it to myself.

I believe that it was arrogant for Krakeur to include himself in the story. If he wanted to share his story then write your own biography. Why would someone start a story about someone else and then just turn it into the Krakeur show? It would be one thing if he had a closely related short story that helps the reader understand, but it seems very self centered or egotistical to make it about himself. I don’t see it as helpful at all, I just think it throws off the whole story. We are talking about one character and then we flip the whole thing over and switch it to a completely different person “As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody” (Krakeur 134). Well, turns out his attributes remain to hold throughout his youth! Krakeur is proving his own point by writing about himself. “I was twenty-three, a year younger than Chris McCandless when he walked the Alaskan Bush'' (Krakeur 135). Krakeur has proved multiple times that he made the story about himself which shows he is arrogant.

I believe that it can be ethical in certain situations. For “Into the Wild”, I don’t think that Krakauer should’ve inserted himself into the story. He didn’t know McCandless and he doesn’t fit into the story. But in some biographies people write they did know the subject but didn’t come into the picture until later in this person’s life. It would make sense for the author to insert themselves later in the story. 

I think that the interruption was and wasn’t helpful to the story. It does offer a new perspective into the story. Then again, we don’t hear directly from the main character. But the reader is able to see the Alaskan perspective through the eyes of the author, since we aren’t able to hear about that perspective through the main character. This also allows the reader to get an idea of the thoughts that one may have in that situation. “As the days passed, I grew increasingly anxious. I had no radio nor any means of communicating with the outside world” (Krakauer, 140). We also get to see what surviving Alaska is like and the challenges that one may face. For example, Krakauer faced problems with no communication and anxiety of being alone. Krakauer, “...felt abandoned, vulnerable, lost” (Krakauer). We get to see a similar story and feelings shown. To how McCandless might have been feeling. The reader can then take the two stories and connect them.

It definitely was an expected element of the story. It does take a pause with the McCandless story and slow it down right as it was getting to the good part. I think that if I were writing a biography, I wouldn’t have inserted myself into the story unless I was an integral part of the story. If I didn’t have a personal connection to the main character, I don’t think my memories or trips would have enough of a connection to tie them in.

Hmmm, Krakauer putting himself in the mitz of the story added nothing. If he were to write about his opinions and thoughts from the very start, and also KNEW McCandless, it would be a little more understandable. Even then though, the story he writes is not about himself, and as a reporter of this real story, it was not appropriate to write about himself. 

Although...though it may not have been ethical to talk about his opinions on the subject, he does have a right to. At the end of the day, it's Krakauer's book, and if he wants to write about his take, he can. Also, not saying it is right because it is not, but if anyone can talk about their take on what happened to McCandless, it would be him.  "My suspicion that McCandless's death was unplanned, that it was a terrible accident, comes from reading those few documents he left behind and from listening to the men and women who spent time with him over the final years of his life" (page 135). He has interviewed, studied his life, and written about him for probably years. It must be hard writing about someone and not telling the readers what you think. It may help the readers look at a different perspective of someone who is knowledgeable of Chris's adventures.

However, when he tells his own stories like the time he brooded "on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs, I got it into my head to climb a mountain called the Devil's Thumb (page 134), which was almost shocking. Of course, he may be related to Chris in ways like they both liked to travel, but to input a person's story is a little self-conceded. 

I believe Krauker’s interruptions were somewhat helpful to the novel because it showed how significantly similar he thinks he is to Mccandles. Makes sense because it is easier to decipher a person if you relate to them, and that's what I think Krakuer was trying to achieve. Krakauer’s intentions for chapter 14 were to give the readers the idea that he understood why Mccandles tried to achieve a very lofty goal. He says “as a youth…I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless…like Mccandles” (Krakauer 134), this shows the youthfulness and impulsiveness that Krakauer claims to relate to. Along with that he takes into consideration the life ending consequences that could occur when he climbed the Devil's Thumb. This was a way to show how his youth was arrogant and how Mccandles could be as well, “ Bellow was thirty-seven hundred feet of air…the sour taste of panic rose in my throat” (Krakauer 143). Yes in some parts his interruptions were unnecessary and lengthy, yet in some cases I believe he is just being sympathetic about Mccandles impulsiveness. The element wasn’t too surprising to me, however I believe I wouldn’t have added my personal stories within the novel if I didn’t personally know Mccandles. If I did add them I would convey to the readers that they are my thoughts on how I could relate to the character, I would not infer like Krakauer did.

In some cases with nonfiction writing, it isn’t completely unethical for an author to interrupt and insert their own narrative into the story. If it’s a story they have a personal connection with, it would actually enhance a reader’s understanding of the subject. In this case, though, Krakauer had no personal connection to McCandless’ story, and his interruption felt jarring against the original story.

Krakauer’s narrative was similar to the other survivalist stories he interwove in the preceding chapters. It aimed at placing McCandless’ journey in a broader context. Most of his sojourn through Alaska went unknown except for the few diary entries McCandless had kept. It was entirely up to Krakauer to fill in those blank spaces, and the easiest method was to resort to his own experience. He, like McCandless, was drawn to the rugged frontier of Alaska and its dangers of “storm clouds,” “cold”, and the precipitous drop of a “bladelike summit ridge” (Krakauer 135). Krakauer had also disappointed his father. He had an internal turmoil that could only be satiated by discovering a “world…rich with possibility” (Krakauer 136). His story paralleled McCandless’; the two wanted to escape from society. Krakauer’s personal narrative was another version of the various survivalist stories he sprinkled to flesh out McCandless’ story. By describing the uncertainties and perils that plagued the wild Alaskan wilderness, Krakauer gives the reader a first-narrative experience of what McCandless might’ve gone through while stranded up north. It gave the reader a chance to look at McCandless’ story more fairly but also more subjectively because their outlook has been molded by Krakauer’s biased narration. If I were an author tasked with writing McCandless’ story, I would’ve struggled trying to fill in those missing puzzle pieces because I lacked that experience. But Krakauer had a personal story at his disposal, and it made sense from an author's point of view to include that.

However, his choice of timing was awful. The story was starting to pick up the pace as the mystery was being unveiled. He diminished that excitement by dampening it with his personal story, which actually should’ve been lumped together with the other survivalist story.

The author's narrative technique in Into the Wild involves initially weaving the opinions of the characters into the story prior to interjecting his own experiences. This shift was intended to demonstrate humanity's drive to vanquish adversity, specifically in the wilderness. However, the author Jon's approach, though it aimed to connect the reader to the overarching theme, achieved the opposite effect. To explain, this sudden interruption disrupted the cohesion of the book and instead, it left readers feeling disconnected from the story. This sudden intrusion shifted the focus away from the protagonist, McCandless, and toward Krakauer, increasing confusion and undermining the overall flow of the story. While his personal insights did provide a glimpse into the book's central theme of risk and self-reinvention, his execution was last-minute and choppy. To conclude, while the book ultimately is able to convey the central theme, Krakauer's narrative approach resulted in a fragmentary reading experience that breaks off the readers from both the author and the story itself. 

Quotes that prove this is, “As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. I disappointed my father in the usual ways. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured my undisciplined imagination, I pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession, and from the age of seventeen until my late twenties that something was mountain climbing” (Krakauer, 134), and, “One of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell. His face is horribly emaciated, almost skeletal. But if he pitied himself in those last difficult hours—because he was so young, because he was alone, because his body had betrayed him and his will let him down—it’s not apparent from the photograph. He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God” (Krakauer, 199). These two quotes were meant to create a parallel between Krakaeur’s own anger and desire for acceptance and McCandless’s fate, to hopefully create the big idea of risk and self-reinvention. In all fairness, his insight, as these quotes show, does allow the reader to know what the big idea of the story is. Regardless, however, his interruption still provokes the reader because of the fact that it interrupts both the overall flow and expectations of the story along with the reader. Consequently, these quotes would have worked better if Krakaeur provided his experience throughout the story, and instead, and thus his attempt to connect it all together resembles a last-minute and choppy decision. 

In  my opinion I was not a fan of the interruptions in the story. Krakauer's interruptions are not helpful whatsoever, I find it more confusing to understand the story of McCandless when these interruptions are made. Placing yourself in someone else's story doesn't justify it because you're the author. ““My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzshe, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards…”

(134) Understanding how McCandless' decisions can be looked at in a way of disagreement, Krakauers is expressing this opinion a little too much for someone who is telling the story of a different individual. Going into this book you're prepared to hear the story of Chris McCanless and the journey he had gone through. “We like companionship, see, but we can’t stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.” (96) When Krakauer applied his opinion into the book I did not find this surprising considering he had done it a little big in the middle of the book by applying different stories from people who were in the same situations as McCandless. 

I do not see it fit that so far into the book, that two chapters of not our time was dedicated to the author, with no aforemention of this happening. I believe Krakauer’s journey does not add incite into Mcandless’s journey as the other expeditionary tale’s of those alike Chris has. I feel it is much to drawn out, one chapter I can get over still with some distain, but two is much too long and drawn out. “I disappointed my father in the usual ways. Like Mcandless.” (Krakauer 134) With no background information to this Krakauer makes me feel like he is stretching his own personal life to fit in with Chris, making what he did seem more normal when throughout this whole book, he has written it to feel as if it is an extreme out of the ordinary life he had lived. I do not feel as if it helped, based on the other anecdote’s he shared I do not see his personal story to be of any help, it seemed he was forcing this piece into the story. “At the bottom of the crevase, waiting for death to come, with nobody aware of how or where I’d met my end.” (Krakauer 139) I get what Krakauer is getting at here, being lonely waiting to die with no help, but the crevase he describes is an accidental fall in, Chris voluntarily went into the wilderness and did not accidentally fall into a death trap, he felt he was prepared. For this reason I don’t see what Krakauer is trying to add to the story, it doesn’t make sense to me personally. I feel all it does is slow the momentum, he took more time into his own story than any other one, it confused me greatly as to why this is added.

The author made a decision by inserting himself into his own story to try to make a great story more personal for himself and for everyone reading. With that said, it was very ethical for the author to do so; it makes the story hit more deep down and make people think. It shows Mccandless thoughts and ideas are not not foreign to everyone. 

For me the story would not change if chapter 14 was not included into this book. It does not change because the story is about Mccandless and not the author. Chapter 14 though is in the book and includes a great deal of extra detail to the story. Krakauer relates on a personal level, “But my sense of Chris McCandless’s intentions comes, too, from a more personal perspective” (Krakauer, 134). The author helps push the idea of McCandless’s death by using a real life example from his own life. 

Krkauer throwing himself in the story is very bold but he made it work. Something nobody would have expected but helps the story come to life, it shows a better perspective of what McCandless could have been going through. The one thing McCandless didn't have was experience, Two previous Alaska expeditions had taught me that I couldn’t afford to waste a rare day of perfect weather” (Krakauer, 141). Krakauer knows the ins and outs of Alaska and how to survive the awful weather, McCandless went into the wilderness with barely any gear and tried to do the impossible.