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| Edition: | Anchor (Paperback) |
| Author: | |
| Published: | August 2007 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| ISBN 10: | 0307387178 |
| New: | $7.98 (86) |
| Used: | $1.99 (384) |
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Into the Wild (1996) by Jon Krakauer is a bestselling non-fiction book about the adventures of Christopher McCandless. It is an expansion of Krakauer's 9,000-word article, "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside. Krakauer intersperses McCandless's story with a discussion of the wilderness experiences of people such as John Muir and John Menlove Edwards, as well as some of his own adventures. Krakauer first went to Alaska in 1974 and has returned there twenty times since. He spent three years carrying out the background research work for this biography. The book has been adapted into a 2007 movie of the same name directed by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless.
Background
Chris McCandless grew up in Annandale, Virginia, and died at age 24 in a wilderness area in the state of Alaska. It is theorized that he died because he ate some seeds that had mold which gave off a deadly chemical, thus leaving him weak. After graduating in 1990 from Emory University, McCandless ceased communicating with his family, gave away his savings of $24,000 to Oxfam and began traveling, later abandoning his car and burning all the money in his wallet.
In April 1992, Jim Gallien gave McCandless a ride to the Stampede Trail in Alaska. There McCandless headed down the snow-covered trail to begin an odyssey with only ten pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, a camera, several boxes of rifle rounds,and a small selection of reading material — including a field guide to the region's edible plants, Tana'ina Plantlore. He took a road map but no compass. He died sometime in August, and his decomposed body was found in early September by a moose hunter.
Summary
The book begins with the discovery of McCandless' body inside an abandoned bus and retraces his travels during the two years he was missing. Christopher McCandless shed his real name early in his journey, adopting the moniker "Alexander Supertramp". He spent time in Carthage, South Dakota with a man named Wayne Westerberg. Krakauer interprets McCandless' intensely ascetic personality as possibly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and McCandless' favorite writer, Jack London. He explores the similarities between McCandless' experiences and motivations and his own as a young man, recounting in detail his own attempt to climb Devils Thumb in Alaska. He also relates the stories of some other young men who vanished into the wilderness, such as Everett Ruess, an artist and wanderer who went missing in the Utah desert during 1934 at age 20. In addition, he describes at some length the grief and puzzlement of McCandless's family and friends.
McCandless survived for approximately 112 days in the Alaskan wilderness, foraging for edible roots and berries, shooting an assortment of game—including a moose—and keeping a journal. Although he planned to hike to the coast, the boggy terrain of summer proved too difficult and he decided instead to camp in a derelict bus. In July, he tried to leave, only to find the route blocked by a melted river. Toward the end of July, after apparently remaining healthy for more than three months, McCandless wrote a journal entry reporting extreme weakness and blaming it on "potato seeds". As Krakauer explains, McCandless had been eating the roots of Hedysarum alpinum, a historically edible plant commonly known as wild potato (also "Eskimo potato"), which are sweet and nourishing in the spring but later become too tough to eat. When this happened, McCandless may have attempted to eat the seeds instead. Krakauer theorizes that the seeds contained a poisonous alkaloid, possibly swainsonine (the toxic chemical in locoweed) or something similar. In addition to neurological symptoms such as weakness and loss of coordination, the poison causes starvation by blocking nutrient metabolism in the body.
According to Krakauer, a well-nourished person might consume the seeds and survive because the body can use its stores of glucose and amino acids to rid itself of the poison. Since McCandless lived on a diet of rice, lean meat, and wild plants and had less than 10% body fat when he died, Krakauer theorized he was likely unable to fend off the toxins. However, when the Eskimo potatoes from the area around the bus were later tested in a laboratory of the University of Alaska Fairbanks by Dr. Thomas Clausen, toxins were not found. Roots of wild potato were used extensively by Aboriginal people. Krakauer later slightly modified his theory regarding the cause of McCandless' death. He believes the seeds of the wild potato had been moldy, and it is the mold that contributed to the seeds' toxicity. The exact cause of the young man's death remains open to question. McCandless may simply have starved to death, a theory backed by the fact that McCandless' body weighed an estimated 72 pounds (33 kg) at the time it was discovered.
