Summary:
The comparison between the author of "Into the Wild" (Krakaur) and the man he documents in the book (Chris McCandless)is very similar. They both have an amazing adventure, to better themselves. On the one hand, you have Krakauer, who is Traveling to receive the interviews he needs to go and have his book be a success. McCandless, on the other hand, is traveling, because he believes he needs to make his life a success.
McCandless is a man who knew no limits. When it all was said and done, a man of his caliber was almost unheard of. He not only showed himself to others, he was also extremely distant in the same sense. McCandless uses many effective means to accomplish the things he does. In one aspect, on could say that he is a wild man, and that he never truly lives life to the fullest, that dying such a meaningless and sophomoric death just showed how naive he was. In the other hand, you can look at McCandless as being courageous, and extremely heroic. It takes a special breed of man to do what he did. He risked his life to experience the chance and journey of a lifetime. To say this, is nonetheless brilliant. He affects so many lives, all positively. Everyone has a positive experience with this young man. Although he was young, he had the wisdom of such older a man. He enlightened everyone he met, and through doing this, left them with a positive outlook on him and his attempts. In one instance, he has such an impact that one man decides to take his advice, and sell his home, sell everything, and go and live in an RV in the middle of nowhere. This can be contradicted with the simple people who were affected through the McDonalds where he held a job. Although it isn't a significant contradiction between the two, it can be seen, that it doesn't matter what the magnitude of the effect is, it still occurred, to a certain extent.
Krakauer was obviously tainted by this man's incredible story. It is very plausible as well to say that Krakauer was a courageous man. He went and retraced McCandless' footsteps, back to where McCandless was last seen, to the people he talked to, and where he was 'sighted.' Not everyone can go on the journey that Krakauer went through. It takes a special breed to go and retrace the footsteps of an incredible journey. Not only did that, but its not like just every person can go and truly do what Krakauer did. He seems more prone to just call people on the phone, and get interviews, and not take it any further than that.
But this man went out, and had himself an adventure, which he in turn wrote about, and it added so much to the story. This man travels so much to get the interviews for the people he has found have talked to McCandless and who have a history with him. It takes a different kind of man to just be able to do that.
Krakauer and McCandless are very similar. They both have an amazing adventure, to better themselves. On the one hand, you have Krakauer, who is Traveling to receive the interviews he needs to go and have his book be a success. McCandless, on the other hand, is traveling, because he believes he needs to make his life a success. Both of these tie into each other. Krakauer and his writing, is his life. That is his passion and his job that keeps him alive. McCandless has no job, but is traveling to fulfill his own dream, the thing that keeps him going, that keeps him alive. When you look at the similarities in the reasons for the travels, you can deduct a lot from them. It seems as though it's not only a simple fact of 'getting up in the morning and living out your life' I believe its something more, like 'going out and making something of you life.' The only way to do this is to do what you want to do, and McCandless envisions this. It seems as if Krakauer uses this as fuel to keep him going. If he didn't have McCandless' story to keep him going, there would be no reason for him to be there. So McCandless directly impacts Krakauer during the writing process of this story. It seems like every crucial piece is there, due to some reasoning on both sides, McCandless and Krakauer. You can't have a great story without a great adventure. You can't have Into the Wild without McCandless and you can't have knowledge without Krakauer. So you need all these pieces to tie into each other, because they all play an important roll. That's because Krakauer and McCandless are very similar. They both envision the same type of drive. Although they do it in different terms, they both still accomplish this through their adventures and knowledge.
This is the complete article, containing 759 words
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