Previous Next

Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is a nonfiction testament to the idea that human beings are, despite occasional impulses to the contrary, social animals. Krakauer demonstrates that no matter how much a person desires to live a secluded life in the wild, the need for human contact is an inevitable and compelling force, whether in the form of a desire for social comfort and a sense of belonging or as a way to meet basic needs. Rejecting that fundamental need, even because of psychological trauma, can have dire, perhaps fatal, consequences.
 
This idea is clear in the work’s major conflict—McCandless’s internal struggle between the longing for social isolation and the desire to connect meaningfully with the people around him. He despises his parents, particularly his father, and finds their wealth and status repulsive. On his flight into the wilderness, he meets people who grow fond of him and try to warn him about venturing alone, yet McCandless is determined to resist his own social needs, instead seeking out a secluded existence, free of human contact. In doing so, he leaves all of the people who care about him, the very thing he needs, behind.

In the book’s inciting incident, Krakauer reveals that McCandless’s failed relationship with his parents may have driven him into seclusion. He learns of his father Walt’s bigamy and of how he maintained his relationship with his first wife while also living with Billie McCandless, Christopher’s mother. His father’s dishonesty and hypocrisy, to Christopher, is just an example of how “people are bad to each other so often.” The fights between Billie and Walt push McCandless to reject familial bonds, extending that rejection to other social connections, which leads him to plan the trip to the Alaskan wilderness that eventually ends his life.

Throughout the book’s rising action, McCandless oscillates between seeking human companionship, often out of necessity, and then rejecting the natural intimacies that form with those relationships. He travels throughout the West and Southwest, meeting many people along the way who help him with food, shelter, and employment. His social interactions with these people fulfill his basic needs, even allowing him to fund his Alaskan adventure, yet they also provide him with much-needed companionship, including everything from talks around campfires to musical performances. Ronald Franz, for example, grows so fond of McCandless that he offers to adopt him as his grandson, a gesture of love that might have soothed the wound left by his parents. However, McCandless rejects this offer, leaving Franz in tears. Each encounter on McCandless’s journey ends in a similar way. He leaves the people he needs, and he ignores their pleas for caution and their calls for him to drop his plans to live alone in the wilderness.

As the book approaches its climax, McCandless has made his way to the Alaskan wilderness and spends the winter and spring in an abandoned bus. Ironically, his only way to survive in the isolated wilderness is to shelter inside the bus, an object born out of the materialism and human society that McCandless despises. The bus serves as a symbol reinforcing the idea that humans cannot escape society, suggesting that aspects are essential for survival. The climax occurs when McCandless is unable to cross the Teklanika River in the summer because of flooding, forcing him back to the bus. As Krakauer notes, if McCandless had kept a map or maintained a line of communication to the outside world, he would have known about a point a bit further away where the river was crossable. McCandless’s refusal to connect with people ends tragically.

In the book’s falling action, McCandless is alone, starving, and desperate. Unable or unwilling to seek other people for assistance, he is incapable of sourcing enough food to sustain himself. He slowly becomes weaker and eventually dies alone on the bus. McCandless’s death, a result of his inability to overcome his own internal struggle, was avoidable. He simply needed to accept the necessity of human contact. His rejection of human relationships ends his life.

In the resolution, Krakauer and McCandless’s parents visit the bus where he died. Their memorialization emphasizes the fact that McCandless, ultimately, could never escape his connection to human society. It demonstrates how much he meant to his parents and sister, a fact that he tried to escape. McCandless, Krakauer suggests, came to this realization too late, after reading Tolstoy’s Family Happiness: “He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others.” McCandless’s journey into the wilderness contradicted this idea, and following his death, all that remained were the broken people he abandoned in his search for an isolated existence in the wilderness.

Previous section Full Book Summary Next section Key Facts

Popular pages: Into the Wild

Take a Study Break