Chapter. 1
1. Chris McCandless was a very smart, athletic young man. He went to college in Atlanta and was very smart and had a scholarship for there. He had a bad relationship with his parents and didn’t talk to them a lot. He did come from a well off family who was wealthy. He grew up with them in DC and he went to Emerton University. He was skinny, about 5 foot 8, and in good shape.
He decided to go off on a trip to Alaska to live in the wilderness for a while. He gave away all his money and possesions and he hitchhiked to Alaska to live there. He made it to Fairbanks and began his journey on the treacherous stampede trail.
2.Jon Krakauer introduces two main themes in the authors note. First he introduces the theme that young man have somewhat of an attraction toward doing dangerous things like how Chris went into the wilderness and tried to survive. Some other examples are high risk sports ( skydiving, rock climbing, diving.) another theme that is introduced is whether Chris was insane or was he doing good. Many people argued he was a idiot who though he could survive on his own. Others said he was immensely courageous and noble. Youll have to read the book and decide for yourself which one is right. There was also the theme of the grip the wilderness and the frontier has on the American imagination. Finally it brings up the parent relationships between father and son.
3.
The purpose of the quoted material is to set up what is happening in the story. It shows the last human contact that Chris had other than meeting with Gallien. It also tells how he will not talk to any other humans and gives the famous quote “ and now I go into the wild”. It also shows that he knew he might die in the wild. It shows his last contact with a human.
4. Alex is really Chris McCandless, the guy who is going into the Alaskan wilderness. He just gave himself a different name but we don’t know why yet.
Authors note and first chapter
5. Jim Gallien is an Alaskan camper, hunter, hiker who gave Chris or Alex a ride. He saw him on the side of the road hitchhiking and gave him a ride to the beginning of the stampede trail. Something odd is that he though Chris looked like every other hitchhiker, something many others didn't think. He is also a electrician who works for the union.
Pg. 3-4
6. Gallien thought McCandless looked like any other traveler who thought he could handle the elements of the forest. He also thought he didn’t look crazy or anything but he looked very rugged because he had been hitchhiking for so long.
Pg. 3-4
7. Gallien tells McCandless to wear two pairs of socks and to take his food and boots. He says that this will keep his feet warm while he is out there. He also said to call Gallien if anything went wrong. Finally he tells Chris to call his number to return the boots if he makes it back.
pg. 7
8. Gallien offered Chris his lunch his wife packed him and some socks. He also offered him some cash. McCandless said he didn’t need Galliens food or money but he did take the boots from gallien. They later found these boots when they found Chris's body.
Pg. 6-7
9. Gallien thought Chris would get hungry and leave the woods just like every other hiker that had come berfore him has. He decided that alerting the police would be useless then because Chris would just leave later. The thing was that Chris was not your average hitch hiker. He was special and could survive for a bit.Pg. 7
10.Its ironic because McCandless stays in the forest and eats the food in the forest. Basically when McCandless gets hungry he lives off the land. This way he can survive in the wold and not go hungry like a normal person would Also chris isn’t a normal person he is extreme. Even Gallien says he isn’t like the normal hitchhiker.
Pg. 7
Chapter 2
1.
Jack London is a good choice to include a quote from because he was a famous author. Not only was he a famous author but he was a great outdoorsman. He found gold, had a ranch, camped, hiked and did everything Chris wanted to do in the book Into The Wild and because of this Jack London is a perfect fit to have a quote in the book.
Pg. 9
2. The purpose of describing these three things is to show how rugged and away from civilization these places are. We learn Mt. McKinley is a very steep, rocky, and rugged mountains. We learn the Stampede trail is not really a trail as most of the trail has fallen to the woods. We also learn how big Denali Park is and that it contains a lot of wildlife like wolves, and moose. This all sets up the idea, and vision in our head that the Stampede trail Chris is on is very rugged, muddy, hard to traverse, filled with wild animals, and basically completely separated form civilization except for hunters.
Pg. 9-11
3. The cause of Chris McCandless’s death was thought to be starvation at first because he was so skinny when they found him. The later discovered it was something else but starvation played a part. Since Chris couldn’t find food he had to eat the roots off of plants. He ate one root that made his undernourished body not be able to process food correctly and he died of starvation due to the roots he ate.
Pg. 13-14
Chapter 3
1. Wayne Westerberg is a bigger guy who owns a grain elevator in Carthage South Dakota, and is a harvester who runs a combine crew that follows the harvest up from Texas and farther North. He and Chris meet when he picks up Chris Hitchhiking. Chris worked with Wayne for about three days then left but Wayne said he could come of Carthage if he ever needed work. Chris showed up there and worked tere for a while unto Wayne was arrested. Chris got along well with Wayne because hew told all these crazy stories at the bar about his travels and had a lot of things In common with Wayne. Chris also fit in perfect with the small town feel of the town. Pg.16-18
2. These two terms describe the culture that the area has a lot of hitchhikers or people that just wander around this area. You can tell because first Wayne says he has employed a lot of hitch hikers in town. Also the fact that they use these terms shows these people exist. A rubber tramp is a vagabond who owns a vehicle and a leather tramp is someone who wanders and doesn’t own a vehicle and is forced to hitchhike everywhere they go.
Pg. 17
3. Chris found a surrogate family because he became close to these people and he wasn’t really close with his old family. Krakauer said they drank together, cooked for eachother, and chased woman together like brothers or a family. Basically they supported each other like a family. Also Chris was separated from his real family so this was like a actual surrogate family to him.
pg. 18
4. Chris left Carthage when Wayne was arrested for illegally decoding TV signals so people could watch the TV for free. The government caught him and he went to jail for a while. Chris left after he was arrested probably because Wayne was so close to Chris and without him there he just left . Also without Wayne there he had no work at the Grain elevator so he left.
Pg.19
5. We know that War and Peace was important to Chris because he gave it to Wayne and Leo Tolstoy, the author of the book, was one of Chris’s inspirations for what he did and one of McCandless’s favorite authors because he wrote about things that had to do with the outdoors. He also wrote a note in it saying to Wayne to listen to Pierre his alter ego.
Pg.19
6. Chris lived in a wealthy family in Annandale Virginia in his childhood. He was very smart and athletic. His father Walt was originally an aerospace engineer. He later opened up his own consulting firm with his Wife Billie. In 1990 Chris graduated from Emory university. He still had about 20,000 dollars in his college fund after he graduated. He was in Atlanta and donated that whole fund to Oxfam and ran away to the wild.
Pg. 19-23
7. Some clues Chris gave was that he didn’t want a new car and was happy with his old one. This is very odd in a world where we always want a newer or better thing. He also didn’t give or receive any gifts, very out of the whole commercialism act of buying people things. Also he didn’t want his parents to pay for his college and he lived in a small, simple apartment in college, very different from what most people want.
Pg. 20-22
8. Chris began an odyssey when he left and made a new life. His major change was giving himself a new name. He called himself Alex Supertramp and drove West to start his adventure. Driving West is also symbolic because long ago that’s where the new frontier was like the Wild West.
Pg. 22-23
Chapters 4-5
1. It applies to Chris because he wanted to get away from the life he was living which he didn’t think was realistic and go to the wild and the desert is a place completed cut off from modern society, and commercialism so it was perfect. Also Chris abandons all his stuff before he enters the desert like his money, gun, and car. This shows that he wanted to completely drop his old “fake” life and find reality.
Pg.25-29
2. Jan Burres is rubber tramp who picked up Chris when he was hitchhiking. She traveled around the country and sold stuff at flea markets. She found him on US Highway 101 on the Pacific shore. She saw him picking berries and putting them into a milk carton while holding a book on plants. They picked him up and he camped with them for a week and Bob Burres taught him some things about tramping. Later on, after he left BullHead city, he went to their campsite and stayed there. They were at a place called the slabs, an old navy air base outside of Niland. The slabs was a huge flea market full of people like Jan, Bob , and Chris. Chris stayed there and helped them sell stuff and met a lot of people. He liked to read and sell a lot of books. After about a week he left.
Pg. 30-31
3. Chris wanted to paddle down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California, which was over the border in Mexico the way he was going. Chris started in Topock and paddled south to Lake Havasu. Chris then went up the Bill Williams river, a tributary of the Colorado, and then continued on down the Colorado river to the Colorado river Indian reservation, the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, and the Imperial Wilidlfe Refuge. He camped under rocks on his trip and even entered the Yuma Proving Grounds, a secret military base. He stopped at Yuma and sent a postcard to Wayne with an update. Chris then went down into Morelos Dam and the Mexican border. He was afraid he couldn’t cross without his ID so Chris snuck into Mexico through the Dams floodgates. Once past the Dam though, Alex discovers the river turns into a confusing mess of swamps and irrigation canals so he has to travel on foot to the next canal. Once he reaches the next Wellcolo Canal he discovers it gets smaller and needs the help of locals from time to time. Soon he reaches the end of the Canal which isn’t the ocean only a swamp. He manages to pull his canoe through the mud and reeds but gets lost and has to camp out. By some miracle he finds some Mexican duck hunter guides who tow him to the Ocean. Once he got the the Gulf of California he went South down the East side of the Gulf. He then stopped for about ten days on a beach and then continued paddling. Soone though strong winds blew him out to sea and he broke one of his two paddles. He then returned to the land and abandoned his canoe ending his trip.
Pg.32-36
4. A few things are noticeable about Chris’s writing. First he always seems to write in the Third person not using words I or Me but saying “Alex or he”. Also he seems to be in despair in most of his writing either finding a dead end or getting stuck in a swamp, being blown out t sea, and breaking his paddle. Finally a lot of the entries he wrote were very short.
Pg. 34-36
5. Chris reaches the conclusion that it’s the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living that matters in life not what you have. Basically what he says is that you might not have a lot but your memories, experiences,and being alive is what matters not what you own just like how Chris enjoyed his life even though he had very little he had some amazing experiences. He also said even though he lost 25 pounds which isn’t healthy “his spirit is soaring”
Pg.37
6. Chris worked at a McDonalds in Bullhead City. He lived there for about two months, the longest he stayed in a place. He stayed there for the Winter and even told Wayne he might stop tramping and settle down here. He lived a pretty normal life here opening a bank account, when applying for a job giving his real name, and also his social security number. When he first came to Bullhead he camped out in the desert but later moved to a trailer given to him by a man named Charlie. He didn’t talk to many other people only Charlie and people in the campgrounds and trailer parks.
39-42
7. The slabs was an abandoned navy air base outside of Niland. It comprises of rubber tramps, leather tramps, retired people, unemployed people, destitute people, the young, the old, people running from collection agencies, and men and women of all ages. It is a large thing of concrete foundation spreading across the desert and attracts all these people during the Winter. It attracts some five thousand people and they have a flea market. Some of the local color is that many people living on the move like rubber tramps come here which is a local color of this area. Also the fact that all the flea market occurs with cheap goods from all these traveling people fits in with the local color.
Pg. 43-45
8. Jan Burres says that Chris has many talents and traits. For one he has amazing musical talent as she learned when he picked up a portable electric organ someone left on his table. Also she saw he was really good with dogs from the way he handled hers. He was in great shape and very sociable. He was good at selling stuff at the flea market, and he especially loved dealing and reading books by Jack London since they were about the outdoors and told many people to read his books.
Pg.44-45
9. Jan Burres thought Chris could survive the Alaskan wild. She thought he was a very smart kid. He also survived the paddling in Mexico, talking people into letting him stay at their places, and hopping trains all on his own and she figured he could do the same and figure out how to survive on his Alaskan Oddysey too
Pg. 46
Chapter 6-7
1. Ron Franz is a old man who lives in Salton City. Chris and Franz met when Chris was leaving Salton City after filling his water jug and Franz gave him a ride back to his camp.The relationship between Franz and Chris is very close. Krakauer thinks the relationship was very close and Franz took on Chris like a son.
Pg55
2. Anza Borrego is a “desiccated, phantasamal, badlands “. Chris lives out of here even though he goes and hangs out in the oh my god springs. It means a lot to Franz later because thats where he goes to live after Chris tells him to live out in the wild
Pg. 49
3. The tragedy of Rons life is that when he was at war his wife and kids were killed in a car crash by a drunk driver. After that he lost his good disciplined way and became an alchoholic. He drank a lot of whiskey and lived a bad life. He later got better which is what we see when he finally meets Chris and takes him in like a son.
Pg. 50
4. He felt Chris was stuibborn and poor and he was destitute. He wanted Chris to settle down with him and get a job but Chris didn’t want to. Chris was defensive about it and got upset when Franz talked to him about it. He believed Chris was smart and could do something with his life.
Pg. 51
5.Ron was a leathemaker and one time Chris made a belt with him. Chris etched his story into his belt with pictures of everywhere he had been so far like the detrial wash, Colorado river, mexico, mountains, Carhage and other things.
pg.51-52
5. Krakauer says that Chris looked tan strong and healthy. An odd thing is that Chris took assistance from someone giving him a ride for once, something he usually does not do. Finally Chris is relieved to have escaped having a family again and becoming emotionally attatched to someone, something he didnt need or want for his trip.
6. Chris urged Franz to give up his life of safety and go onto the road like He is. He said to go live on the road and enjoy life. He also said that personal relationships were not the only way to enjoy life. He said to get out and bring out his adventurous spirit and live on the road. Franz listened and went to Chris's old campsite and lived out of a camper.
Pg. 56-58
7. Franz figured out when he met a few hitchhikers. He asked them if they ever heard about him and they told him he froze to death while he was up in Alaska. Ron then stopped belieieng in God and cancelled his church membership because he said if there was a god a good kid like Chris wouldn’t die. He also drank whiskey again for the first time in a while and got sick.
Pg. 60
8. Westerburg was annoyed because the combine wasn’t working at the moment. That happened because he lost one of his best workers, Chris, when he died and things got a lot tougher for Wayne while doing the combine work. He thought Chris would be back by now but he died up in Alaska.
Pg. 62
9. The author said the relationship between Chris and his father was very bad. He said that he hated his dad and he wanted to separate himself from it. He thought his dad was trying to force him into the same lifestyle he lived which Chris hated. He liked his sister hough and thought she was very beautiful.
Pg. 64
Chapter 8-9
1.The purpose of including Gene’s story is to compare Chris to other adventurers that were like him and died in the wild like him. Krakauer did this since the one person who wrote about the article, Nick, said Chris was crazy just like many other people who went into Alaska to try and survive an adventure. Gene was a man who was a great athlete, smart man, and went to a prestigious college just like Chris did. He also had a view on life that humans didn’t need to live life like we do now and he wanted to live his life like he lived in the stone age a bit like Chris wanted to. He also wanted to show that Chris wasn’t a bit mentally perturbed like Gene was and that Chris wasn’t like every other person who died in the wild.
Pg.73- 75
2.John Waterman was a person who loved being in and exploring the wild just like Chris. Since they had this similarity Krakauer probably included Johns story in Into The Wild. They also had a major difference which was probably a reason his story was included. John loved to climb mountains and would attempt to climb the hardest ones. He was also very odd like Chris was. He had some odd quirks like taking notes on every conversation he had and he was socially awkard. He also died while out in the wild like Chris did. They also both had common sense. They were different though because Waterman was mentally ill and that affected his decisions and the way he acted. Chris wasn’t mentally ill so he did everything he did
with full control and knowledge which makes Chris different from him and therefore different from the average loon who died in the wilderness.
Pg. 76-80,85
3. Finally, what is the purpose of including the story of Chris McCunn in the narrative?
Krakaure included McCunn’s story because, once again, he was very similar to Chris but had differnces. McCunn worked on an oil line in Texas and was a smart guy like Chris was. His one problem was he was a bit out there. He was dreamy and didn’t always think everything out. This was his fatal problem. Carl was flown out into a remote lake near the Colleen river. He went there to take pictures and enjoy the nature. He enjoyed nature a lot just like Chris did. He also died in the wild like Chris but the reason was different. Since Carl was out there he didn’t think to arrange for someone to fly him out of the lake when winter rolled around. This got him killed because he just assumed someone was going to come save him. Chris on the otherhand knew no one would come to his rescue when times got hard and was better prepared in a way.
Pg. 80-85
4. Everett was a man who was born on Oakland. He moved many different places when he grew up and had a tight knit family. When he was 16 he first ventured out into the wild for a summer of hiking. He then came back home, got his diploma, and then he went back into the wild. He went to UCLA for a semester then he left. He explored everywhere, sending letter home talking about his exciting, dangerous adventures. He eventually disappeared last known to be at Davis Gulch near a river. Many people thought he died or disapeared to a new life. All we know is the last thing he wrote was the name nemo on the wall which means lonely. He loved the sheer beauty of nature and being free out in the nature just like Chris did. He simply thought the outdoors, nature, and the pain he went through to live how he did was beautiful
Pg. 89-94
5. What Ken Sleight’s conclusion about Ruess and McCandless?
Ken Sleight concluded that Ruess and Chris both loved being around people even though they might’ve seemed like they didn’t. Even though they usually lived in solidarity most of the time they liked companionship. They would stay around people and then get tired of them and leave like Ken said “ We like companionship you see, but we don’t like to be around people for very long” pg .96
