A Commentary on Into the Wild

Into the Wild: A commentary on the book, the movie, and society
Andrew B. Tufts
Spring 2008
ED 529: Content Literacy
Books in Action!

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter …

The requirements for this assignment call for comparisons and contrasts to be drawn between a book and its movie; I’ve chosen Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. However, because of the importance of this book and its subject-matter on my life and future, the scope of a simple “compare and contrast” is too narrow. Into the Wild addresses societal issues that I’ve been trying to understand, appreciate and enunciate since reading another book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. These issues present themselves in my teachings with high school students at church, in monthly “letters to the editor” of my local paper, in my sporadic blog entries (terraceadvocate.blogspot.com), and in conversation with friends, family, and colleagues. The artistic aspirations of Krakauer and movie director Sean Penn are not obvious, but to consider both modes of Into the Wild mere avenues for telling the story of a lost soul would cheapen the ultimate message of Christopher McCandless: “happiness only real when shared” (Krakauer, 1996, p. 189).

The usual reaction to a movie by a particular book’s lover is one of disappointment; the movie is never able to convey the intricacies of the book or the movie has altered specific information to better fit a Hollywood criterion. Since I had not read the book, I had no such feelings the first time I saw Into the Wild late in 2007; I knew it to be one of Jessie’s, my wife’s, most treasured books and also knew of McCandless’s story by reading Beyond Civilization, another book by Daniel Quinn, but was otherwise a virgin viewer. By reading Krakauer’s account and watching Penn’s movie for a second time, you gain an enriched perspective of McCandless that a limited exposure to one mode or the other would not have provided. Penn’s devotion to the facts presented in the book, his use of Krakauer as a consultant, and the assistance provided by the McCandless family for both modes gives a well-rounded account of McCandless as a person and his difficulties with a society he struggled to understand; the book and movie versions of Into the Wild worked in concert to tell this story.

The striking difference is an obvious one: visual images. McCandless left everything in order live in an area of the country which is both empty and beautiful; without personally visiting the American Southwest, it’s hard to gain an appreciation for how influential this was to McCandless. Seeing the places McCandless traveled and lived gives the viewer a sense of companionship that is lost in the book. McCandless was drawn by the spirits of adventure and unknown that drew so many West in the 1800s. His venture drew comparisons, which Krakauer addresses and explores, to that of Everett Ruess, another young boy who left his home in the early 1900s (but continued to correspond with family) for the canyons and deserts and eventually disappeared. (My wife, while living in San Diego, took numerous trips to this areas, alone at times, and even reminisces about sleeping with a clutched knife.)

These places were also important to McCandless’s family, something we learn in the text but not the video. Almost a year after Chris’s body was found and returned, Krakauer took the McCandless family to the bus he had made his home in the Alaskan interior. There, his mother and father toured their son’s final home. His mother, Billie, said:

It’s comforting to know Chris was here, to know for certain that he spent time beside this river, that he stood on this patch of ground. So many places we’ve visited in the past three years – we’d wonder if possibly Chris had been there. It was terrible not knowing – not knowing anything at all (Krakauer, 1996, p. 203).

Because of the freedom and expressiveness allowed in the text, Krakauer is able to paint a fair, well-rounded picture of the McCandless family. We learn more about their background, about the infidelity that Chris eventually discovered and which pushed him away, and about the good times that Chris had with his family. This is an important lesson, because the McCandless family comes off as petty and overly materialistic in the movie version. I think this portrayal was necessary, however, for director Penn to emphasize the main difference between Chris and his parents: material possessions. Krakauer paints Chris’s parents more as people whose personal relationship struggled while trying to build a successful business and family than as only money- and image-obsessed people.

The visual images were also important in the way the audience was able to view the people McCandless came in contact with, and McCandless himself. Krakauer does a wonderful job interviewing every possible person he could get his hands on, and the book paints wonderful portraits of each person. But I think the true value of Into the Wild, as a movie, is in the depictions of the people, particularly that of Ron Franz (as played by Hal Holbrook), and McCandless’s relationships with them.

Franz was an elderly gentleman who’d lost his wife and children to a drunk driver while he was at war; McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch) gives him a “son” to care for and learn from. Their relationship blossoms over many weeks to the point where, at their final parting, Franz tearfully asks McCandless if he can adopt him in order to continue his family line. You can’t help but be moved by this man’s plea to the young McCandless to carry on his family’s name after he’s passed; Holbrook gave Franz emotion that did not come out in the book. This scene frustrated, and nearly angered, me the most.

McCandless displays borderline indifference when Franz makes this plea. The old man cries and begs and McCandless plays it off as nearly meaningless, or rather, as something that should be saved for another place and time. With many of McCandless’s personal contacts, he emphasizes a living-in-the-now mentality, but seemingly puts limits on the type of living he will engage in; specifically, he shies away from deep personal contact, a lesson he will realize in his final moments.

The last visual image that enhanced the text was Hirsch’s portrayal of McCandless during his final days in Alaska. Hirsch decimated his body for the sake of acting in order to show how thin and feeble McCandless became during his Alaskan adventure. Hirsch’s display of emotion when McCandless botched the kill and preparation of the moose, when McCandless apparently ate the poisonous potato seeds, and when McCandless curled up in his sleeping bag the final time were lasting images which gave McCandless and his story humanity. Hirsch allowed us to feel the pain and despair McCandless felt as his life slipped away from him, alone in the wilderness. Those images brought the text alive in a way I do not think would have been possible if I had not seen the movie before reading the book. In a way, I’m thankful to Hirsch for his devotion to his craft and for giving McCandless a voice and humanity I could appreciate.

Krakauer’s best addition to the McCandless story was his investigative attempt to understand McCandless as a “lost soul”. First, he discusses comments people made to him after his first McCandless story: a magazine article in Outdoor. Readers expressed near hatred for the risky action McCandless’s subjected himself to, for his apparent disregard for his family, and for the cavalier attitude he appeared to have by tackling the wilderness on his own. Krakauer offers a personal anecdote about climbing a mountain called the Devils Thumb, in Alaska, by himself when he was roughly the same age as McCandless. Krakauer’s aim is to give McCandless a rational consciousness, to show that his decision to abandon his material possessions and attempt a life reliant on the kindness of and community with others.

To the latter point, both versions of Into the Wild show how well McCandless adapted to new social groups, how he opened himself up (to the extent of discussing his family) to anyone with a willing ear, and how he willingly trusted strangers. In some ways I got the impression, throughout both narratives, that although McCandless was willing to give advice and assistance to anyone, many of his actions were selfish in nature. His relationship with Ron Franz seems indicative of this: he wanted to teach Franz to get out of his home and explore the world more, but he also wanted Franz to leave him alone, let him come and go as he pleased, and not get too attached. Krakauer allows the reader to make the case that McCandless learned this lesson while alone in Alaska, and was actually ready to embrace community fully when he returned.

This is an issue I’ve dealt with on a few levels, specifically by working with homeless people in Ocean County. Despite their situation (some of whom have chosen it) there is a sense of community and togetherness that is not as strong, or is lacking, among people of the mainstream culture. Although homeless are perceived to be in an awful situation, many are happy and content because they share responsibilities and survival goals with similar people in a similar situation. McCandless seemed to recognize this on some level (specifically with his parents’ relationship) but failed to understand some key concepts. Daniel Quinn addresses this in Beyond Civilization, a book I finished shortly before seeing Into the Wild. Quinn says, “I hear from so many youngsters who, like Chris McCandless, dream of fleeing civilization, of striking out on their own in the wilderness, of ‘living off the land’” (Quinn, 2000, p. 46).

The idea of “fleeing civilization” is thematic in much of Quinn’s literature, but I think it is also the lasting lesson from Chris McCandless. McCandless became disheartened by the way his parental structure was compromised by his parents’ pursuit of things he found ultimately meaningless; many of their fights were over money. McCandless witnessed the strangle-hold that money and materialism has over our society, and found that true happiness was not found in the form of a degree or title or large bank account, but in the form of personal relationships and team-living. Despite the public perception of his decision to abandon all “wealth” (in fact, a friend’s reaction to his initial reading of Into the Wild was anger toward McCandless for questioning and abandoning wealth and possessions), McCandless realized something that people are becoming more increasingly aware of: the meaning of life is not to accumulate.

It’s unfortunate that our society places so much importance on “having things”: toys, money, titles, clothes, homes. In many ways, we define success in our society by a standard unachievable by most. The Story of Stuff (http://storyofstuff.com/), a 20-minute internet movie, details how our consumer culture is fed by society’s mentality that our money, titles, clothes, homes, electronics, etc. are never good enough (and, also, that our national happiness index has slowly, but continually, plummeted). There’s always something that is better than what we have. And the only people that benefit from this way of life benefit are those who make money off our constant spending. And in order to constantly spend, we have to constantly work, which leaves less time for family, friends, and self.

And, yes, I’m ranting a bit, but this past weekend our community lost another student to suicide. Each year the suicide rate increases (The Human Odyssey, 2007), national high school dropout rates increase (Herbert, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/opinion/22herbert.html), and since the Columbine massacre a decade ago, random acts of violence have spread across the country to now include schools of all academic levels, and also shopping malls and fast-food restaurants, to name a few places traumatized during the past holiday season. The point is that, increasingly, people are becoming more disillusioned with the future they’re presented (how many depression medications are on the market now?), and more are taking their frustrations out in creative and destructive ways. Christopher McCandless was not a freak or a rare boy. I know friends of mine and even family members are scratching their heads wondering how they’re going to amass all the things considered symbols of success in our society and be happy in the process. As a future educator, I know I’m going to have students like Chris in my classes. I know there’s a life I can teach them about that is not possession driven and can also be happy, fruitful, and meaningful.

References

Free Range Studios. (1996). The story of stuff. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from http://storyofstuff.com/index.html.

Herbert, B. (2008, April 22). Clueless in America. New York Times. Retrieved April 24, 2008 from http://www.nytimes.com.

The Human Odyssey. (2007). Teen suicide rate soars. Retrieved April 28, 2008 from http://thehumanodyssey.typepad.com.

Krakauer, J. (1996). Into the Wild. New York: Villard.

Quinn, D. (2000). Beyond civilization: Humanity’s next great adventure. New York: Three Rivers Press.