thesis for into the wild

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Into the Wild by John Krakauer Thesis Statements and Essay Topics

Below you will find four outstanding thesis statements / paper topics for “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer that can be used as essay starters. All four incorporate at least one of the themes found in “Into the Wild” and are broad enough so that it will be easy to find textual support, yet narrow enough to provide a focused clear thesis statement. These thesis statements offer a short summary of “Into the Wild” in terms of different elements that could be important in an essay. You are, of course, free to add your own analysis and understanding of the plot or themes to them. Using the essay topics below in conjunction with the list of important quotes from  “Into the Wild”  on our quotes page, you should have no trouble connecting with the text and writing an excellent essay.

Thesis Statement #1: The Allure of the Wilderness

To many people the wilderness has a certain allure as a pristine place free of the evils of modern society, a place where one can be free and get in touch with his soul. However, the reality of living in the wilderness can be quite different from the romantic notions harbored by those who see it as an escape. How does Chris McCandless handle this conflict between appearance and reality as he journeys into the wilderness alone? Is he deluded by a romantic view of the wilderness, or does he actually find what he is looking for there? Write an essay with textual support in which you explore this conflict and how McCandless deals with it.

Thesis Statement #2: Isolation

Chris McCandless isolates himself from the other students at Emory, from his friends, and from his family, resulting in his decision to make a solitary trek into the wilderness, where his isolation will be complete. Yet, at one point in the story, he pleads, “Mom, mom, help me.” Does McCandless really wish to be isolated? If so, why? If not, why does he behave as he does, pushing away the people who care about him the most and going headlong into a potentially dangerous situation? Write an essay using solid textual evidence in which you explain McCandless’s behavior as you understand it, keeping in mind his journal entries and reflections.

Thesis Statement #3: Forgiveness

Chris McCandless is a study in contradictions. On the one hand, he is a compassionate person, who feels a responsibility for the many people who are poor and hungry. On the other hand, his actions toward his family and friends are selfish and hurtful. His inability to forgive what he perceives as his parents’ greed and materialism affects his entire life, contributing to his decision to isolate himself at Emory and to his disgust with society, which prompts him to go alone into the wilderness. If he had found a way to forgive his parents for their mistakes, would he have gone to such extremes in his search to find himself? Write an essay using evidence from the text in which you explain how McCandless’s attitude toward his family and society and his inability to forgive contribute to his ultimate demise.

Thesis Statement #4: The Search for Identity

Many books about young people focus on the main character’s quest for identity. Chris McCandless, at nineteen, is no exception, as evidenced by his rejection of everything his parents stand for. Desperate to separate himself from them in every way possible to explore his very soul, he isolates himself physically and emotionally, hoping to find freedom and peace within. He will go to any lengths to avoid being like his parents, even, out of a sense of moral certitude, rejecting the gift giving he and his friends once enjoyed, oblivious to the fact that he is hurting his friends as a result. How could someone so kind, compassionate, and intelligent heartlessly reject his parents and friends, with no thought to their feelings? Is his kindness merely a charade by which he fools himself into thinking he is different from the others? Does his cruel behavior reflect the person he really is? Who is the real Chris McCandless? How does his identity struggle affect the decisions he makes for the rest of his all-too-brief life? Write a persuasive essay with textual support in which you explain who Chris McCandless really is and how you have come to that conclusion.

Into the Wild

Jon krakauer, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

When the body of a young male hiker is discovered in Alaska’s Denali National Park, Outside magazine assigns journalist Jon Krakauer to cover the story. The young man turns out to be the runaway son of a well-to-do East Coast family, Christopher (Chris) McCandless , who after graduating from Emory University in May 1990, gave away his savings to charity, abandoned his car, burned all his cash , and hitchhiked across the country “to live off the land” in the Alaskan wilderness.

Five months earlier, on April 28, 1992, Jim Gallien , driving on the outskirts of Fairbanks, Alaska, spots a young hitchhiker and offers him a ride. The young man is Christopher McCandless, but he introduces himself as “ Alex ” and says that he intends to “live off the land for a few months” in Denali National Park. Gallien, noticing that Chris’s backpack is far too light to be carrying enough supplies for an extended camping trip, tries to dissuade from hiking alone into the woods. But Chris refuses Gallien’s advice, so Gallien insists that the young man take his lunch and boots with him. Chris reluctantly accepts these gifts and walks onto the snowy Stampede Trail . Gallien figures that the boy will reemerge out of the forest when he becomes hungry .

Later that year, in September, a trio of moose hunters, a couple from Anchorage and an ATV driver, happen upon an abandoned bus in Denali National Park, where they discover Chris’ decomposing body. Alaska State troopers recover the corpse, taking it to a crime lab, which determines the cause of death to be starvation.

Two months after the discovery of McCandless’ body, Krakauer interviews grain elevator operator Wayne Westerberg , who recounts the day he picked up Chris, (going by “Alex” at the time), on his way back to Carthage, South Dakota. Chris works so hard on Westerberg’s grain elevator crew that Wayne offers him a job. Yet Wayne is arrested for stealing satellite TV codes, forcing Chris to hit the road in search of work.

Going back to October 1990, McCandless’ yellow Datsun is found abandoned in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Through his research, Krakauer figures out that after a flash flood dampened the Datsun’s engine, Chris abandoned the malfunctioning car to conceal his predicament from his parents and the authorities.

Chris then hitchhikes throughout the west. Along the way, he camps with drifters Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob , flips burgers at McDonald’s in Bullhead City, canoes the Colorado River to Mexico, and befriends eighty-one-year-old Ronald Franz .

On March 14, 1992, Chris returns to Carthage to work for Wayne Westerberg, but leaves at the end of the month, having gathered just enough money and supplies to pursue his dream of living out in the Alaskan wilderness.

Hitchhiking north, Chris arrives in Alaska on April 18, 1992 and crosses the Teklanika River onto the Stampede Trail ten days later. Off the Sushana River, Chris discovers an abandoned city bus, where he makes camp. Throughout the summer, Chris hunts and forages, eventually shooting down a moose . Butchering the moose’s messy carcass to preserve its meat fills Chris with regret, but through reading, journaling and self-reflection, McCandless comes to terms with his kill and decides to return to civilization.

However, the thawing summer floodwaters of the Teklanika River prevent Chris from crossing, so he returns to the bus to regroup.

On July 30, Chris frantically writes in his journal that he is very weak and in grave danger, but also mentions potato seeds . Too weak to hunt or gather, McCandless dies soon thereafter, having spent his last days discovering that the greatest happinesses in life must be shared with others.

Investigating the potato seeds further, Krakauer theorizes that McCandless died of swainsonine poisoning after consuming wild potato seeds laced with a toxic mold.

Having solved the mystery of McCandless’s death, Krakauer accompanies Chris’ parents’, Walt and Billie , to pay their respects at the bus where Chris died. Though comforted by the surrounding landscape’s beauty, Walt and Billie leave still nursing heavy hearts.

The Movie “Into the Wild” Essay

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The book “Into The Wild” written by a famous American writer and journalist Jon Krakauer and first published in 1996 has addressed the theme of the real sense of life including the meaning of success, the value of money, and the concept of happiness based on an itinerant traveler’s, Christopher McCandless, real life example.

The movie “Into The Wild” inspired by Krakauer’s book and directed by the brilliant Sean Penn has also focused on McCandless’ experience but its approach is different. The following paper aims to compare and contrast the book “Into The Wild” with the movie “Into The Wild” pointing out key details that are different to one another. Overall, the evaluation of the two works of art suggests a conclusion that the book is more focused on demonstrating the main character’s inner world along with the implications of his world vision that led him to the death, while the movie is more of a celebration of the main character.

First, juxtaposing the book “Into The Wild” with the movie of the same name¸ the book by Krakauer is a detailed examination of the main hero’s life and death, while the movie directed by Penn is more focused on McCandless’ celebration. Such difference can be explained by the fact that Krakauer shares his own experience and world vision. To the great extent, his hero represents the author’s own life story. As a result, the readers may see the sincerity of his style and engage in the live dialogue fully imbued with the author’s personal ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

Reasoning about his main character living experience, Krakauer associates himself with McCandless because he believes that they share the common vision of the world including the disillusionment of material values and passion for the real values including unity with nature and spiritual growth. In the case of the movie, this unique charm is lost because it is almost impossible to demonstrate other person’s inner world and world vision in such a way that it should be well understood and accepted by the wide public. In this case, the audience may notice Chinese whispers effect.

Next, the book is full of the author’s personal reflections, speculations, and comments about the main character and life in general the audience will not find in the movie. For instance, the book has a large portion where Krakauer provides the explanation regarding his hero that he had no intentions to commit suicide. In this section, the author speaks about his main character’s pursuit to find the meaning of life, the essence of self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and harmony with his inner and outer world.

Some readers might object by stating that McCandless’ comment regarding his planned trip was the following, “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again…” (Krakauer 55), and the use of the word “fatal” suggests that he intended to die in the trip. However, these readers might fail to notice the word “if” meaning that the character was simply aware of the fact that the trip could be dangerous for him and might lead to the fatal consequences.

Therefore, a conclusion can be made that the author of the book consistently demonstrates that his main character is a lover of life rather than a suicidal and extravagant person as some of the viewers have believed about him after watching the film. Moreover, Krakauer comments that had the circumstances been more positive for his character, he could be able to return home after his adventurous trip where he aimed to find the real essence of life.

Further, the book and the movie have different perspectives of storytelling. While the book is the documentation of its author’s voice, the film is shown from the perspective of the main character, Christopher McCandless ( Into The Wild) . Surprisingly to some of the representatives of the audience, Christopher McCandless was a real figure. His true life story served the plot scenario for Krakauer’s work.

Jon Krakauer, as a prominent author interested in the ruminations on the themes of the essence of life, pursuit of happiness, alternative way of living, and alternative world vision to the commonly spread materialistic way of thinking, found Christopher McCandless to be a highly intriguing object for his studies and interpretation because this young man had a sort of mentality that is infrequent for the modern-day western society with its love for money and comfort, and still the man was a real American with the extreme passion for journey to the west and learning some incredible secrets of living in harmony with nature.

Finally, the book “Into The Wild” has addressed the wider scope of chronology than the film. Whereas the film is mainly focused on the adult period in McCandless’s life, Krakauer decided to have a wider focus in an effort to tell his readers every single detail about the character’s outstanding personality, extremely rich inner world, numerous talents along with the dangerous signs of protest against all authorities and desire to shun all the values of the materialistic world.

So, Krakauer’s work makes an overview of different events in McCandless’s life, beginning from his early childhood, to demonstrate how the character’s world vision was shaped and what factors influenced him. In contrast, the film “Into The Wild” focuses on McCandless’s most notorious period in life that is his travelling around the United States and his final journey to Alaska that became fatal for him.

In conclusion, the book “Into The Wild” and the movie “Into The Wild” have both addressed the events of life and death of one of the most controversial itinerant travelers and hikers Christopher McCandless. The main difference between these two works of art is the perspective of the story telling. While the book approaches the subject theme from the point of view of a famous journalist, essayist, and novelist interested in the theme of a pursuit of happiness and essence of life searches, Jon Krakauer, the film directed by the famous director Sean Penn shows the events from the perspective of the main character himself.

The outcome of such two positions is that the representatives of the wide public have accepted the book in a more favorable way because it provides more assistance in pondering into McCandless’ inner world and the hazardous way of thinking that has laid him to the tragedy at the end of his life. In contrast, the movie does not interpret the inner values and thoughts of the main character and does not provide extra understating and suggestions to think over. What it does is just a depiction of what happened without reason on the causes of McCandless’ fatality.

Works Cited

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild , New York: Anchor Books, 1997. Print.

Into The Wild . Director Sean Penn. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Vintage. 2007. DVD.

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Into the Wild Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Into The Wild — A Rhetorical Analysis Of Into the Wild

A Rhetorical Analysis of into The Wild

• Categories: Chris Mccandless Into The Wild Jon Krakauer

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Words: 887 |

Published: Apr 29, 2022

Words: 887 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Rhetorical analysis of used literary devices in "into the wild", adding the lens of pathos to let the reader connect with the characters, works cited.

• Carrington, D. (2007). Christopher McCandless and the allure of the wilderness. The Harvard Review of Latin America, 7(2), 12-15.
• Drescher, L. (2008). Back to the wild: The photograph as evidence in the search for the real Christopher McCandless. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 54(2), 323-350.
• Everett, S. (2008). "It's all about the journey": Nature, narrative, and gender in Into the Wild. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 49(3), 291-302.
• Graf, R. (2010). Into the Wild: The spiritual quest of Christopher McCandless. Literature and Theology, 24(2), 141-155.
• Haugen, R. K. (2019). Wild truths: The myth of Christopher McCandless and the contested landscapes of the American West. Western American Literature, 54(3), 337-368.
• Krakauer, J. (1996). Into the Wild. Anchor Books.
• McAllister, K. (2016). Into the Wild and the rhetoric of literary journalism. American Literary History, 28(3), 475-496.
• McCandless, C. (1990). Carine McCandless interviews. Krakauer, Jon. Retrieved from http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/04/magic-happens-sometimes.html
• Moore, M. J. (2009). Crossing the wild river: The mythical geography of Into the Wild. Western American Literature, 44(4), 397-425.
• Taylor, J. M. (2003). Nature as God: The spiritual journey of Christopher McCandless. BYU Studies Quarterly, 42(2), 81-102.

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