Into The Wild [Paperback] JON KRAKAUER [Paperback] JON KRAKAUER [Paperback] JON KRAKAUER [Paperback] JON KRAKAUER [Paperback] JON KRAKAUER Paperback – 1 July 2011

This is the story of Christopher Mccandless: a prodigal kid born and brought up in an affluent family in US. Immediately after his graduation in 1990 he left his worldly belongings and his home without informing anyone including his family in 1990 to experience the world on his own, at a tender age of 22.By third week of August 1994 he was dead in Alaska. The book traces his journey though not in chronological order.After reading a small article about the death of an unknown 'hitchhiker' in Alaska, the intrigued Jon Krakauer, himself a mountaineer, decided to explore further about the deceased. The book is a result of author's attempt to discover Christopher Mccandless. Beside his journeys, the book also covers his past that gives an insight into why he was the way we find him; his relation with parents, sister, friends, his outlook about the society and his non-conforming attitude towards tradition and status quo. In between chapters there are brief profiling of personalities ( adventurers ), who had similar experiences with life and might have influenced Chris like Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, John Franklin etc. Each chapter starts with quotes which are relevant to the prose that follows.I received the book on 11th July afternoon and was through it by the evening of the day. I found this book very compelling. Chris and his experiences as chronicled by Jon intrigues, challenges, provokes, stimulates, scares and enthrals. Since Chris ceased his communication with his family and his friends and he himself did very limited documentation, the informations about his life after he left his home is very limited. Jon discovers, meet and interviews people Mccadless spent time with during his journey. Their experience with Chris and interpretation constitute the major part of the book.The author's efforts, hence, deserves accolades and appreciation for bringing life of Mccandless to all of us else latter would have died an anonymous death. Reading through the book you also discover the spiritual dimension of leading a homeless and nomadic life without any personal possession of material and instruments of modern world.Chris was not carrying any cash, ID and had deliberately severed all connections from his past. He wondered across US under different aliases to conceal his true identity and to ensure that he remains untraceable by his parents and authority , doing trivial and menial jobs, interacting with helpful and congenial people, surviving a near death experience before he left for his ULTIMATE DREAM of spending days in Alaskan wild solely on his own. He carried his 0.22 calibre gun and some pounds of rice to survive inside in May 1992 and after almost 4 months inside he was dead. He chanced upon a deserted and dilapidated bus and chose to make it his last home and shelter.In the last few chapters, as a reader I longed for more.The information on his experience during last days of his life are very limited. The end is painfully sad and as a reader I am deprived of spiritual and philosophical enlightenment that Mccandless might have experienced. Because despite all pain and suffering the excitement and serenity is very conspicuous ( as evident from his photographs that he shot just before his death). Had he surrendered to eventuality? He was keeping a journal but the entries were very limited and brief. Was he unwilling to share? If so, why. Though it is quite clear that before his death he made an unsuccessful attempt to get back to the civilisation.One question still intrigues me why did not he made more attempts to get out of there or probably he did? Why he looks so contained and satisfied in his last photographs? He had discovered what true happiness is like, accepts that he was scared and wanted to reconnect to the world that he so willingly denounced yet the look on his expression does not betray any compunction and is in contradiction to the physical and mental pain he was enduring after his failed attempt to get out the wild.After almost four months in Alaska he was dead and his decomposed body, in his sleeping bag, was discovered by the moose hunters. Since the release of the book and a movie based on it, Mccandless has assumed a cult status.Like many his life is having a strange affect on me. It almost shocked me. As a reader, it would be difficult to ignore him and his experience. As a reader in the end you can love him, hate him for causing indescribable pain to his family and ridicule him for being so ill prepared and suicidal but you simply cannot stay indifferent. I wished he could have been more elaborate in his documentation of his experiences. But unfortunately his declining health could not let him do that or perhaps he did not want it to be that way.Born under the sign of Aquarius he was an explorer. He had the guts to pursue and discover the answers to his questions.An Aquarian mind is assumed to be light years ahead of average people. Like many geniuses, he probably had the ability to examine the world with a different and more pertinent perspective; a perspective that may appear insane to majority. The book may help you discover the eccentric and enchanting possibilities of human psyche.PS: The book does not carry any picture. The photos I am talking about in my review is available on internet.

"In to the wild" has been a movie I have been most attached too and this made me to pick up this book and understand the protagonist, Alexander Supertramp (Chris McCandless) even better. No doubt book is far better than the movie and seldom made me doubt if Chris is something of a role model for the people to follow or disregard as some odd immature hippie. The series of discussions and comparisons throughout the book makes me understand Chris far better than in the movie.Chris basically disregard everything that comes easily to him, the reason being the parents with whom he was not comfortable with after learning their past. He did not want to associate with them and thus wanted to prove his mettle by challenging himself by being away from the society, into the solitude and without any human bonds around.Visiting "Fairbanks bus 142" was in my bucket list and this book made it even more promising.

“Youth is wasted on the Young!”- The great GB Shaw opined thus. ‘Into The Wild’ is the tale of a young man on whom youth was wasted. Wasted but not thrown away.Christopher Walt McCandless was a young man that went into the Alaskan wild, leaving his parents and siblings behind, donating all his savings, abandoning his car, possessions and even burning whatever little money he had in his wallet, thus shaking away the shackles of financial security. He went away from the human civilization not because he was a glum recluse or a misanthropist. He was just one of those innumerable youngsters who feel that the answers to the testing questions of Life can be found only far away from Life and not by being in it on a day-to-day basis.With evidently little preparation but abundant confidence that is the trademark of Youth, Chris headed into the Alaskan wilderness determined to make a living ‘off the land’, by hunting and eating whatever he could gather there, far away from the nearest human being. Little would he have known that this would be his last venture away from his family, because his lifeless body was found in emaciated state, four months after he went in.There are so many arguments already about whether Chris was right or wrong, wise or foolish and so on and hence I will cut them all out from my review. What stood out for me from this tale were a few things. Chris wasn’t impudent or headstrong. Ask any youngster about what his idea of a wildest adventure is and he will tell you about living untethered. Having had ideas of traveling across the country myself, alone in my bike, I could vouch for the forces that could have pushed Chris onwards. Add to that the ideals of authors like Henry David Thoreau and Jack London who happened to be the favorites of Chris, the impressionable young mind of McCandless had all the ingredients to leave on the wild seeking.Of course, Chris had issues with his parents and their ways of life, as any normal teenager would. His father’s being bigamous aggravated things a lot too. But it didn’t make Chris a bitter person. As everyone who met Chris during his self-imposed exile would vouch for, Chris was an intelligent, amiable, ideal and hardworking young man. He wasn’t suicidal, because if he was, he could have simply jumped off a bridge or a cliff. He was just experimental about life in his own way and he wanted to simply relish the freedom of living ‘off the grid’. His notes and the concise journal entries during his last few days of life prove that he never went in there to simply die. As Jon proves beyond doubt, Chris lost his life to food-poisoning and starvation, having been cut off from his return to the safety of civilization by a flooded river.Jon has done a beautiful job by not completely idolizing Chris. Jon presents the experiences of people who met Chris during his sojourn across North America and none of them have anything negative to tell about Chris. That was not just because he was dead, but because he was indeed good. Jon also shares his own personal experience of being stuck in a cold cliff during his own arrogant attempt to scale a peak, as a result of which he could relate with Chris easily.This is a simple and beautiful book for anyone that loves questions of an existential nature. You may love Chris or hate him for the waste of a young life, but you cannot deny the fact that each and every one of us has a ‘Chris’ inside. Some of us have managed to smother ‘him’ by heaping our day-to-day responsibilities and concerns atop, but all of us have a Chris straining at the leash, wanting to run far, very far away from all this maddening crowd of life!

Krakauer's masterful narrative unfolds like a cinematic odyssey. 'Into the Wild' is a haunting, visually stunning journey. Chris McCandless's story will leave you breathless. A timeless epic of human spirit.

The book is amazing