Into the Wild Review

Into the Wild is a long drawn out book that delves into the life of Christopher McCandless, an infamous American hitchhiker that starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness. The author, Jon Krakauer, tracks Christopher’s steps through life, evaluating his strained family ties, the places he stopped when hitchhiking across America, and so on. The buildup to his Alaska trip consumes the majority of the book, nearly 150 pages worth of the 203 total pages. Once Krakauer finally does talk about McCandless’s time in Alaska, it feels short lived and rushed, leaving one longing for more. Overall, I applaud Krakauer for his thoroughness, even if the book wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

Krakauer seems to have a personal interest in this story because of the dangers he also experienced while traveling in Alaska. In addition to personal experience in that regard, Krakuer had years of experience being a writer by the time he pursued this story. In the mid 1980s he became a full-time writer and his freelance work appeared in Architectural Digest, National Geographic Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian. With so many successful works under his belt, he pursued a larger story.

I believe he wanted to pursue this story to show that McCandless wasn’t crazy, that in fact the motivation behind his misadventures are the same motivations that Krakauer felt earlier in his life, that any person who wants to break out of the cycle has felt. He has two whole chapters dedicated to talking about other people that perished the same way McCandless did and elaborates on why he doesn’t think their missions were entirely crazy or suicidal as some believe. Krakauer even recounts his misadventure while climbing the Devil’s Thumb and relates it back to McCandless’s story.

To make this book reach 203 pages, Krakauer did extensive research and interviews. He interviewed a large number of the people that McCandless encountered on his travels and did background research on each individual. For example, he gave an entire backstory on Wayne Westerburg, which is one of the people McCandless worked for. Below is an excerpt from the book that illustrates this.

“Westerburg, in his mid-thirties, was brought to Carthage as a young boy by adoptive parents. A Renaissance man of the plains, he is a farmer, welder, businessman, machinist, ace mechanic, commodities speculator, licensed airplane pilot, computer programmer, electronics trouble shooter, video-game repairman…”

Krakauer was so thorough that he even gave the backstory on what happened to McCandless’s car that he abandoned in the desert.

“Over the next three years the Park Service used the Datsun to make undercover drug buys that led to numerous arrests in the crime-plagued national recreation area…”

Such intense levels of description really helped paint a picture for the reader. However, in the grand scheme of things, this kind of description can almost hinder the progression of the story line.

Even so, one must commend him on the pictures he paints. Even when he interviewed subjects, he quoted them as accurately as possible to help the reader get a feel of the person. An example of this would be, “Livin’ in the bush isn’t no picnic.”

All in all, I believe this story to be extremely thorough and believe it covers all imaginable aspects of the story. In my case, however, I was left wanting more of the actual story and less backstory.

I would personally give this book four stars out of five in regards to what Krakauer hoped to achieve. I recommend this book to anybody who enjoys investigative or outdoorsy books.