Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild

The purpose of this research is to examine Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, an account of the personal odyssey of one Christopher McCandless, who made a project of renouncing his middle class family connections after graduation from college, and some two years and four months later was found dead in the Alaskan wilderness. The plan of the research will be to set forth a synopsis of Krakauer's account, an expanded version of a story that originally appeared in the periodical Outside, and then to discuss issues questions McCandless's experience raise regarding priorities of life.

Into the Wild can be described as something of a meditation on the cost-benefit analysis of the lure of the wilderness in its various configurations--desert, sea, mountains, snow, forest. Each chapter begins with at least one epigram from any of a number of acknowledged classics of their kind, from Jack London's wilderness adventures to Thoreau's Walden to McCandless's diary. The epigram appears meant as a commentary on the description of each succeeding episode of McCandless's journey, begun more or less in secret as far as his family was concerned, with graduation in Georgia in 1

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Category: Psychology - J