"Into the Wild"--an Analysis

Paper Summary:

This paper examines themes in "Into the Wild," the story of Chris McCandless's fateful journey into the Alaskan wilderness. The paper considers McCandless in terms of his relationships, and suggests that he had a fear of intimacy. The author also explores Chris's family background and childhood and its impact on his adult behavior. The paper also explores how and why he died. Two themes from the book, of living a fantasy and of going on a spiritual quest are also considered. Finally, this book is compared and contrasted with "Hunger" by Jane Stevenson.

McCandless's Relationships - #1
Krakauer's View of McCandless - #2
McCandless's Family #3
McCandless Death #4
Two Themes in Into the Wild - #5
Chris McCandless and the Mulrooney Sisters
References

From the Paper:

"Chris McCandless was a very private and secretive person; yet, he was apparently sociable and attractive to people as evidenced by the relationships he established after he graduated from college and left his parents. Interviews in Into the Wild show his friends speaking of him with great affection; however, we can only infer how he felt about them. We know he must have felt some attachment because he wrote to them after leaving them and sometimes called them. He did not "burn his bridges behind him" by any means, but he always left them before too much intimacy could develop. Krakauer (1996) suggests that Chris may have had a psychological problem, a fear of intimacy. The quotation the author uses at the beginning of Chapter 7 by Anthony Storr suggests that some trauma in early childhood made such an impact on him that his "principle need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships" (p. 61). Perhaps this explains what appears to be an obsessive hunger for meaning and his conviction that it could only be found in the wilderness. He could not allow relationships to get in the way of satisfying that hunger."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Krakow, J. (1996). Into the wild. New York: Villard.
• Frankl, V. (1993), Man's search for meaning. New York: Buccaneer Books.
• Stevenson, J. (2003). Hunger, in New Writing. Great Britain: Picador.
• Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1990). Springfield, MA: Miriam-Webster, Inc.

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