Book Review: "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

I heard about this story when I was growing up, especially during the times when I started reading Emerson and Thoreau during the first year of university. The first time I ever heard the story I thought it was really quite a stupid endeavour but, as I kept looking at it, I started to wonder what exactly was going through the head of this kid when he left his life behind to go and live in the wilderness. As much as I try, I cannot fathom what was racing in that brain and yet, I have drawn some similarities between the two of us. The first (and probably the most important) is that we both like to read. But, where I enjoy the indoors far too much to venture outside, this boy may have taken Jack London a bit too seriously...

The book is not told as a linear narrative, but instead is told as a series of flashes and vignettes. In one moment, Christopher is alive and in another, it is after he died. In one instance, we see Christopher's life growing up, in another we see a contemporary of him - another nomadic wannabe. It is told in various excerpts from his diary and comments from Jon Krakauer himself (in one moment he draws similarities between himself and the dead Christopher) and even in autobiographical inserts by Krakauer himself in which he solidifies these similarities.

The book actually begins with going through an overview of the story - especially the fact that he died so young. It goes through his personality, his love of reading and exploring but most of all, it also goes through the prevailing theories surrounding his death and the fact that some people didn't think he was being quite as smart as he put out that he was. If we would like to know what I think, I believe it is purely a case of perspective. I told you about my changed perspective about the story and now - I don't think we could possibly know what was going through his head (even if we do have a diary from him) it is still impossible to tell what he felt and thought in those moments when he left for the wilderness.

One of the things I liked most about this book is the amount of work that has clearly gone into it. There are quotes from the father and from the mother, there's an extensive amount of research on how he grew up and his best friends, there's comments on the fact that he played a few instruments and had an appreciation for the music of Tony Bennett. He was a very creative boy yes, but we can see from his childhood especially, that pull he had towards the wilderness. For example: the book speaks about the time his father took him hiking and even though the young Christopher wanted to go higher on the hike, his father thought he was yet too young. This would serve as testament for Christopher's dislike of authority at school.

Another thing I enjoyed in this book is the fact that we are taught that Christopher was not a lone wolf in the case of people running off to be in the wilderness but, not many who did made it out the same person. This is where we come into the argument of the contemporaries. We see the failed attempts at the wilderness lifestyle and the author even comments on one of Christopher's favourite novelists, Jack London and his Call of the Wild, that London himself didn't spend a long time in the wilderness - instead dying an obese alcoholic at the age of 40 years' old. This puts things into perspective as we see not only that there were more people doing this thing but that Christopher now clearly had something he wanted to prove of himself. He wanted to prove he didn't need anyone's permission. He wanted to prove he could do it.

The last thing I want to discuss about this book is that I like the fact we get to see the aftermath of what happened. The book doesn't simply end on the note that Christopher died, but in some of the little vignette chapters, looks at the impact he had on those around him. We see at one point that there is someone thinking about the way he once was, another time we see someone crying over pictures of him, we look at the way people reacted to his death by not throwing away their food since it was found he had died by starvation. His death had a huge impact on those around him and a big impact on the explorer communities as well.

All in all, I thought that this book was an incredibly written work that looks at life a little differently. Life is not broken up into separate sections that we can put into chapters and volumes. But it is a mixture of things with each thing connected on to the other and on to the last. Krakauer constantly hits this in his work, everything is connected and nothing is a singular by itself. Everything of the past is interlinked with the stories of the present which will, someday, become interlinked with those of our many futures.