Because there are such strong similarities to McCandless, the biggest difference being that Krakauer survived his odysseys, and so can tell his tale, Krakauer uses his own past to provide insights into McCandless’s actions and motivations.
Krakauer’s own upbringing and experiences as a young man come up throughout Into the Wild. How does Krakauer’s authorial presence affect McCandless’s story? Ultimate freedom means being accountable to no one but oneself, and thus, even if McCandless usually intended to act for the greater good, he has only his own limited perspective on what will truly lead to the greater good. It is still inherently selfish, however, because it means acting for the individual over society, which is designed to protect everybody. McCandless’s quest for ultimate freedom is not rooted in selfishness it, in fact, comes out of largely noble desires. Krakauer believes that McCandless changed during his Alaska trip, that he may have mellowed and become ready to rejoin society and maybe even his family, although all of this is based on a few small lines Chris wrote, and passages he underlined in his reading.Įxplain how McCandless’s quest for “ultimate freedom” is inherently selfish. Krakauer also makes him a dynamic character, although the basis for this is largely conjecture. Although he is largely presented as good, his flaws are illuminated, and even his best qualities sometimes fail him. In Krakauer’s depiction, McCandless is certainly a round character. In Krakauer’s depiction of McCandless, is he a flat or round character? Static or dynamic? This does not mean that he is not truly compassionate, but this compassion does have bounds. He willingly and intentionally leaves them in a state of utter unhappiness while he travels, and his disregard for his own safety threatens and ultimately destroys their wellbeing. It is clearly central to his personality for his whole life-he spends weekend nights in high school bringing burgers to homeless people-and yet he shows almost no compassion in dealing with his parents once he is in college. McCandless’s compassion is the most enigmatic part of his story.
Is McCandless truly compassionate, as he is often described? Yet because Krakauer makes this explicit, and doesn’t try to fool the reader, the reader still has the freedom to make their own interpretation. For example, because he sees a lot of similarities between Chris and himself, he makes certain assumptions about Chris’s motivations and desires that he might not otherwise make. There is still a scale of more or less impartial, however, and Into the Wild falls on the less-impartial side, as Krakauer himself admits. Is it possible for a biography to be truly impartial? Is Into the Wild?īiography can never be truly impartial, as, even if the author could include every moment of the subject’s life, rather than choosing which are most important, his method of presentation and his diction, inherently affect how the reader will feel about the subject.
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