Out of the Wild

We have just finished up Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer! Instead of a test, our class did creative projects and I chose to do a travel poster on Fairbanks, Alaska. Rather than just a regular poster with images and information, I drew a postcard and wrote a note to the Purples English class. The note read:

Dear Purples,
GREETINGS FROM FAIRBANKS, ALASKA! I hope you all are enjoying the beginnings of spring weather in Maryland, but here it is still about 25 degrees and there is still snow on the ground! So far, I have taken a tour of the museum at the University and explored some of the old gold mining sites. My best adventure since arriving by plane three days ago, though, was the wildlife viewing tour near the city. On the tour, I saw caribou, moose, a grizzle bear, bald eagles, and a pack of wolves! As for plants, I saw mostly spruce forests with some aspen, birch, and willow mixed in. Every way you turn here, there is absolutely stunning scenery!
See you all when I get back,
Margaret

Character Trait Chart

Chapter and Page #	Description/ Quote	Impression of Chris
Chapter 1: Pg.4	"He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most"	Very young
Chapter 1: Pg.  6	"'But he wouldn't give an inch. He had an answer for everything I threw at him.'" (Jim Gallien)	Determined and sometimes downright obstinate
Chapter 1: Pg. 6	"'He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldn't wait to head out there and get started.'" (Jim Gallien)	Instead of being scared, he was excited to go into the wilderness
Chapter 2: Pg. 12	"S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE."	Though he was undaunted at first, McCandless did become desperate in the last days of his life
Ch. 3: Pg. 18	"He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was, he'd do it: hard physical labor,...jobs where you'd get so … dirty you couldn't even tell what you looked like at the end of the day." (Wayne Westerberg)	He was a hard worker and didn't care how messy or disgusting the job was
Ch. 3: Pg. 18 & 20	"He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes, he tried to hard to make sense of the world…" (Wayne Westerberg) "In May 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta...with a 3.72 grade-point average."	Chris was smart, but tended to over-think things
Ch. 3: Pg. 22	" At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence."	In the modern and civilized world, Chris felt kind of stifled and cut off from what he felt life was meant to be like.
Ch. 4: Pg. 29	"McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with the law, savoring the intermittent company of other vagabonds he met along the way."	Chris genuinely enjoyed and appreciated every moment and event of his long road trip.
Ch. 5: Pg. 40	"He could do the job--he cooked in the back--but he always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you'd get on him to hurry...He just didn't make the connection. It was like he was off in his own universe." (Lori Zarza)	Chris was very capable of doing things, but he often was in his own world and did things his way.
Ch. 5: Pg. 46	"He was smart. He'd figured out how to paddle a canoe down to Mexico, how to hop freight trains, how to score a bed at inner-city missions. He figured all of that out on his own, and I felt sure he'd figure out Alaska too." (Jan Burres)	Chris wasn't just book smart. He could figure out how to do things in the wild and get through things on his own.
Ch. 6: Pg.  52	"Not infrequently during their visits, Franz recalls, McCandless's face would darken with anger and he'd fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic mainstream American life."	Chris had a lot of pent up anger against the world and it came out in angry mood swings.
Ch. 6: Pg. 55	"McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well--relieved that he had again evaded the impeding threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it."	Chris may not have minded being around people, but he didn't want any close or lasting relationships.
Ch. 7: Pg. 63	"Alex had been using it [the microwave] to cook chicken, and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere. It wasn't that he was too lazy to clean it up...it was just that he hadn't noticed the grease." (Wayne Westerberg)	"Alex" was smart, but lacked some common sense.
Ch. 7: Pg. 66	"McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire...McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos itself."	Chris's passion for nature overshadowed his desire for women, and he might have thought himself above relationships.
Ch. 8: Pg. 85	"Like Rosellini and Waterman, McCandless was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature. Like Waterman and McCunn, he displayed a staggering paucity of common sense. But unlike Waterman, McCandless wasn't mentally ill. And unlike McCunn, he didn't go into the bush assuming someone would automatically appear to save his bacon before he came to grief."	Chris may have had an almost unhealthy fascination with wild nature and a lack of common sense, but he was not crazy and fully realized that he could die.
Ch. 9: Pg. 96	"...it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, 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." (Ken Sleight)	Chris didn't mind human company for a certain amount of time, but eventually he wanted to be on his own.
Ch. 10: Pg.  102	"Chris almost always had short hair and was clean shaven." (Sam McCandless)	When he was at home, Chris looked more clean-cut than when he was traveling.
Ch. 11: Pg.  107	"Even when we were little… he was very to himself. He wasn't antisocial -- he always had friends, and everybody liked him -- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn't seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely." (Carine McCandless)	Chris had friends, but he didn't really seem to need them and often preferred to spend time by himself.
Ch. 11: Pg. 109	"Chris was fearless even when he was little...he didn't think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge." (Walt McCandless)	From an early age, Chris was willing to take risks.
Ch. 11: Pg. 115	"He was intensely private but could be convivial and gregarious in the extreme. And despite his overdeveloped social conscience, he was no tight-lipped, perpetually grim do-gooder who frowned on fun. To the contrary, he enjoyed tipping a glass now and then and was an incorrigible ham."	McCandless' personality contradicted itself and was very puzzling.
Ch. 12: Pg. 118	"Chris was good at almost everything he ever tried...which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn't argue. He'd just not politely and then do exactly what he wanted." (Walt McCandless)	Chris thought that he could do anything he wanted, and did not take other people's cautions seriously.
Ch. 12: Pg. 120	"He would be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years."	Chris's personality could change drastically from kindness to his "darker side"
Ch. 12: Pg. 122	"If something bothered him, he wouldn't come right out and say it. He'd keep it to himself, harboring his resentment, letting the bad feelings build and build." (Carine McCandless)	When Chris was bothered, he kept his feelings inside, where they grew into something much bigger.
Ch. 13: Pg. 131	"His name was printed wrong. The label said CHRISTOPHER R. MCCANDLESS. His middle initial is really J. It ticked me off that they didn't get it right. I was mad. Then I thought, 'Chris wouldn't care. He'd think it was funny.'	McCandless didn't dwell on little things like a mistake in a name. Instead, he laughed them off.
Ch. 14: Pg. 134	"When the adventure did indeed prove fatal, this melodramatic declaration fueled considerable speculation that the boy had been bent on suicide from the beginning, that when he walked into the bush, he had not intention of ever walking out again. I'm not so sure, however."	Chris may have known that the Alaskan wilderness might claim him, but he did not intend to kill himself.
Ch. 16: Pg. 159	"He was a dandy kid. Real courteous, and he didn't cuss or use a lot of that there slang. You could tell he came from a nice family." (Gaylord Stuckey)	McCandless may not have wanted any close relationships with people, but he was perfectly pleasant.
Ch. 17: Pg. 184	"His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself--more, in the end, than he could deliver."	Chris's life had a purpose, but he demanded a lot of himself and did not want comfort. The journey for his purpose is eventually what killed him.
Ch. 17: Pg. 183	"McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul."	McCandless did not set off in to the wild with the intent of seeing the landscape, but instead to discover himself.
Ch. 18: Pg. 198	"Recognizing the gravity of his predicament, he had abandoned the cocky moniker he had been using for years, Alexander Supertramp, in favor of the name given to him at birth by his parents."	Chris knew that his condition towards the end of his life was deteriorating fast and that there was no guarantee he would survive.
Ch. 18: Pg. 198	"Chris would never, ever, intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life. Anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn't understand the first thing about my brother. " (Carine McCandless)	Chris would not harm the wilderness, even to save himself.
Ch. 18: Pg. 199	"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."	Chris seems to have come to grips with the fact that he was dying and was at peace in the last few days of his life.

Reaction

In my opinion, Chris McCandless was overly obsessed with the harsh side of nature, and in that way was a little crazy. He did have some noble ideas and goals, but the ways that he tried to achieve them showed that he lacked respect for nature and some common sense. Chris was smart and could figure many things out on his own, but he was over-confident in his own abilities and thought that he didn't need the things that other people do to survive the wild. Chris did seem to truly enjoy his travels in the wilderness and, in general, seemed like a kind person who simply had a darker side and tended to over-think things. Ultimately, though, it was his pride, over-confidence, and lack of common sense that killed him.

Famous and Favorite Quotations

In Into the Wild, there are several excerpts from famous authors and those who are not as well known, but interesting nonetheless.

One of my favorite quotations is found on page nine and is an excerpt from The Call of the Wild by Jack London. This quotation describes and personifies the harsher side of nature, which is the side of nature that Chris was so fascinated with. It is also the side of nature that claimed his life. My favorite line from this quotation is, "It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northern Wild."

Another interesting quotation from a well-known author is the excerpt from Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau on page forty-seven. This quotation speaks about the true meaning of success, which is intangible and indescribable, but when it is there, we will know all the same. My favorite line from this quotations is, "If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,--that is your success."

On page two hundred is a quotation from Annie Dillard, a less well-known author. This quotation from Holy the Firm talks about tossing earthly things away as one crosses over into death. It also speaks about simplifying life, as Chris wanted to do. My favorite part of thes quotation is the line, "There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times."

My favorite quotation is probably one spoken by Marianne Williamson (picture). This quotation talks about being our true selves and the benefits of striving to reach our full potential. The quotation reads: "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Picture Source: http://www.bodhitree.com/lectures/Marianne.Williamson.html

A Journey That Would Change My Life

One journey that I would really like to take is one to New Zealand. I'd like to go to New Zealand with my Mom because she lived there for a few years before I was born and I would like to visit the places that she remembers. I think that this trip would be incredible, especially because I would be able to go away from all of the regular tourist attractions on the islands and see what it would be like to live in New Zealand. Even without going off the "beaten trail," I know that New Zealand is a stunning landscape with lots of things to do and see.

This journey would change my life because the people in New Zealand, especially in the places where my Mom went, live very differently from us. Their entire life revolved around a sheep station and the landscape meant that there were much greater distances between stations and towns. For instance, they cannot just run to a grocery store to get supplies or food, so it is shipped in once a week. Though this life style is certainly not the harshest in the world, it is very different from my life here and I think it would give me a fresh perspective on all of my blessings.

Picture Source: http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/08/f2/0b/new-zealand.jpg

Into the Wild: Halfway Point

Our English class is now halfway through Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. These are the responses to questions that we have been answering as we read, along with the page numbers in which we found the answers.

Chapter 1

1. Chris McCandless came from a well-to-do family from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He was an excellent student and athlete, and in fact graduated with honors from Emory University. (Author’s Note)
2.  Jon Krakauer introduces three themes in the Author’s Note. These are, “…the grip wilderness has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, [and] the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons (Author’s Note).”
3. The purpose of the quoted material at the beginning of Chapter One is to give some background information on McCandless. It also foreshadows his death in Alaska and tells the reader that McCandless did realize that he could die on his journey. (pg. 3)
4. Alex is the alias of Chris McCandless. He used this name while he was traveling. (pg. 4)
5. Jim Gallien is a union electrician and outdoorsman who happened to be driving along the George Parks Highway when “Alex” was hitchhiking. Jim was the man who gave McCandless a ride to the beginning of the Stampede Trail. (pg. 4)
6. Gallien judged Chris McCandless to be young, unprepared, and completely set on going into the Alaskan wilderness. (pg. 5)
7. Gallien advised McCandless not to go into the wilderness because he is very unprepared. However, “Alex” refuses to listen to this advice. (p. 6)
8. Alex turned down Gallien’s offer to buy him better gear, saying that he wouldn’t come across anything that he couldn’t handle on his own. Gallien then gave him old rubber work boots to keep his feet warmer and dry, even though the shoes were too big for McCandless. (pg. 6-7_
9. Gallien decided not to alert the authorities about “Alex’s” journey into the wild because he thought that the boy would get hungry and give up. (pg. 7)
10. This statement is ironic because McCandless did not due what a normal person would do, in fact he did exactly the opposite of what Gallien thought he would do. This ended up being a fatal decision. (pg. 7)

Chapter 2

1. Krakauer included a quote from Jack London as the heading of this chapter because Jack London wrote many books about the wilderness and living in the wilderness. This quote specifically involves the Wild laughing at humans who try to come out alive, which fits the story because McCandless does not come out of the Alaskan Wild. (pg. 9)
2. These detailed descriptions give an idea and a picture in the reader’s mind of the terrain and territory that McCandless was facing as he trekked into the wild. (pg 9-11)
3. Though the body of McCandless was very decomposed when it was discovered, there was so little body fat and muscle that starvation was thought to be the cause. (pg. 13-14)

Chapter 3

1. Wayne Westerberg is an owner of two grain elevators and the director of a custom combine crew in South Dakota. He and Chris got along very well after Westerberg picked McCandless up as a hitchhiker. In fact, “Alex” stayed with Westerberg for three days and later came back to work for him. (pgs. 16-18)
2. A “rubber tramp” is a rover or wanderer who owns a vehicle, while “leather tramps” are travelers who do not. These terms both describe the culture of “vagabonds” who travel or wander constantly. (pg. 17)
3. Krakauer says that McCandless found a “surrogate family” in these men because, though he felt somewhat estranged from his own family, Westerberg and his employees lived like a family and acted like a family. He therefore created strong bonds to Westerberg, his employees, and really the entire town. (pgs. 18-19)
4. McCandless left Carthage because Westerberg was arrested for building “black boxes.” This meant that there was no more work at the grain elevator for Chris, and so he left South Dakota.
5. The reader knows that McCandless’ copy of War and Peace was special to him, because on page 19, Krakauer says, “Before departing, he gave Westerberg a treasured edition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. McCandless also writes inside the book to “Listen to Pierre.” (pg. 19)
6. McCandless grew up in the upper-middle-class of a town in Virginia. His father, Walt, was an aerospace engineer, who later launched a small but prosperous consulting firm in which Chris’s mother, Billie, was his partner. McCandless had six half-brothers and sisters from his father’s first marriage and one younger sister, whom he was extremely close to. (pg.19-20)
7. McCandless showed that he was out of step with current society because he didn’t want new cars, his parents to pay for a new car, or all the honors and medals that he could have earned. (pg. 20-21)
8. McCandless adopted a new name when he left, which was a symbol that he was starting a whole new life. (pg. 23)

Chapters 4 and 5

1. This statement applies to Chris because he went into the desert, and on his entire journey, in order to get away from the chaos of life where he felt so far away from what was actually important. (pg. 25)
2. Jan Burres was a “rubber tramp” who traveled around selling trinkets at flea markets and swap meets. Burres and her boyfriend were driving near the town of Orick when they saw McCandless picking berries by the side of the road. They took pity and pulled over and picked him up. He stayed with Jan and her boyfriend for a week and after he left, he took care to stay in touch. (pg. 30-31)
3. After buying the metal canoe in Topock, McCandless paddled down the Colorado River for several days, with one side trip down the Bill Williams river and a day tracking wild horses OnDecember 2, McCandless snuck through open flood gates in order to cross the border. After crossing the border, however, Chris got lost in the maze of canals until some canal officials gave him a scribbled map to the ocean, which in fact led him to a dead end in the desert. After Chris walked to find another river and caught a ride from some duck hunters, McCandless reached the Gulf of California, paddled south along the eastern edge of the gulf, and later abandoned his canoe to travel on foot once again. (pg. 32-36)
4. Chris’ writing in his journal is all in third person and he refers to himself as Alex rather than Chris. (pg. 34-35)
5. Chris decides that, “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found.” (pg. 37)
6. Chris McCandless lived a pretty normal life in Bullhead City, and in fact thought that he might settle down and stay there. (pg. 39)
7. The conditions of the Slabs are definitely not upscale, but they provide some amount of cover and solidarity for the itinerant inhabitants. The people who live there are a mix of people from the retired, to the perpetually unemployed who have come to live cheaply under the sun while it is cold in most other places. One thing that was interesting is the flea market/swap meet that was being held when Chris arrived at the Slabs. (pg. 43-44)
8. Jan recounts that Chris did a lot of socializing at the Slabs, though he needed his solitude sometimes. She also says that he was playful like a little kid and that he had a way with dogs, especially the puppies that Jan had. (pg. 44-45)
9. Burres says that she thought McCandless was slightly crazy to want to go out into the Alaskan wilderness, but that she thought he was smart enough to figure out Alaska, just like he had figured out how to paddle to the Gulf of California, and come through in one piece.

Chapters 6 and 7 

1. Ron Franz was an elderly man who picked up McCandless as a hitchhiker and took him under his wing. Krakauer thinks that Franz was deeply affected by his brief contact with McCandless. (pg. 48)
2. Anza-Borrego is the desert state park in which McCandless set up his camp. (pg. 48)
3. The tragedy of Ron Franz’s life took place on New Year’s Eve of 1957 when Franz’s wife and son, his only child, were killed while Franz was overseas. (pg. 50)
4. Franz thought that Chris was too intelligent and too nice of a kid to be living in the midst fo the nudists, drunks, and dope smokers around the springs. He requested that McCandless get off the road, get an education and a job, and make something of his life. (pg. 51)
5. Franz was a skilled leathermaker who taught “Alex” his skills. McCandless created a leather belt carved with pictures of his journey under Franz’s tutelage. (pg. 51-52)
6. McCandless tried to avoid lasting friendship and the emotional baggage that came along with it. He kept others at arm’s length, though he may be friendly with them, and then flitted out of their lives before they could come to expect anything of him. (pg. 55)
7. Chris told Franz that he should, “…make a radical change in your [Franz’s] lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been to hesitant to attempt.” He says that, essentially, Franz should get out of Salton City and hit the road to live a nomadic life. Franz responds to this by placing most of his possesions in a storage locker, outfitting a van with bunks and camping gear and going out to occupy Chris’s old campsite. (pg. 56-58)
8. Ron Franz learned the McCandless had died when he was giving a ride to a hitchhiker that had recently read the article about Chris in Outside magazine. After hearing about his friend’s death, Franz renounced God and became an atheist, saying that he could not believe in a God that let boys like “Alex” die. (pg. 60)
9. Westerberg was annoyed because it was late in the harvesting season and they were shorthanded on the grain farm, and so had been working eighteen-hour days. Part of the reason he was shorthanded was that they had expected “Alex” to be back at work by then. (pg. 62)
10. Krakauer says that McCandless may have submitted to his father Walt through high school and college, but all the while he brooded about, “…his father’s moral shortcomings, the hypocrisy of his parent’s lifestyle, [and] the tyranny of their conditional love.” However, though McCandless may have disagreed with his parents, he was very close to his sister Carine. (pg. 63-64)

Chapters 8 and 9

1. Krakauer probably included the story of Gene Rossellini because his story and ideas are fairly similar to Chris McCandless’s. Rossellini was obviously a very intelligent man, who studied extensively, but like Chris, did not see a reason to collect honors and degrees. After studying for many years, Rossellini then went out to live in the wild, because, also like Chris, he wanted to, “…return to a natural state.” Though Gene took his goal to more extremes than Chris, for instance, shunning absolutely all technology, and ended his own life where Chris was killed by starvation, their stories are very similar. (pg. 73-75)
2. The story of John Waterman is also similar to the story of Chris McCandless. Many people think that, like Waterman, Chris McCandless had next to no common sense and an almost unhealthy fascination with the harshness of nature. However, Chris was not mentally ill. Like McCandless, Waterman embarked on his last journey completely aware that he may not come back, alone, and underprepared, and, like Chris, these factors and some carelessness on his part were most likely the causes of his death. (pg. 75-79)
3. Carl McCunn’s story and bush expedition also draws many paralells to the story of Chris McCandless. McCunn was also lacking in some common sense, though more so, it seems, than McCandless. Though he was unprepared and may have underestimated the harshness of the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless was not the type to forget to arrange transportation out of the wilderness if he had wanted it. Chris was completely aware that he may not make it out of the harsh, cold wild and did not expect someone to magically appear and save him before he died. (pg. 81-85)
4. Everett Ruess was born in California in 1914. When he was a child, his close-knit family lived at least seven different cities before they settled in southern California when Everett was fourteen. At sixteen, he spent a summer hitchhiking and walking until he wound up in Carmel. There, he convinced Edward Weston to tutor him in painting and block printing, as well as let him hang around the studio with Weston’s sons. Ruess then returned home to receive his high school diploma, but hit the road less than a month after his graduation. He traveled through Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, attended UCLA for exactly one semester, visited his parents twice, and spent a winter in San Francisco. After this, he spent the rest of his life on the road, straining his body, searching for beauty, and writing many letters along the way. He changed his name many times, from Everett Ruess to Lan Rameau, to Evert Rulan, and finally to Nemo. In November 1934, however, Ruess disappeared into the wilderness. His two burros and some graffiti with the name “Nemo” was found along Davis Gulch and the canyons beyond and there are still many theories on how he died. (pg. 89-95)
5. Ken Sleight concludes that, even though many people think that both Everett and Chris were strange, they tried to follow their dream of finding beauty and living in the wild. Sleight says, “That’s what was great about them. They tried. Not many do.” (pg. 96)