Into The Wild chapter review

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Chapter 8

Alaska

Jon Krakauer picks up the explanation of the reception of his 1993 Outdoor magazine article about McCandless’s death that he began in Chapter Six. He quotes a number of letters the magazine received criticizing McCandless, particularly those from experienced campers and Alaska residents, who see the young man’s trip as at best too romantic and at worst dangerously foolhardy. Many letter writers also describe McCandless as a too-familiar type, as a starry-eyed incompetent running from his problems or a nihilist with suicidal tendencies. As if to confirm these descriptions, the narrator then lists other instances of men who became drifters, including several personal encounters from his own travels in Alaska and his time as a mountaineer. By establishing his familiarity with the history of American outdoorsmen and thrill seekers, Krakauer underlines his own authority and sets himself up to refute McCandless’s detractors.

Krakauer offers biographical portraits of three men, Gene Rosellini, the mountain climber John Mallon Waterman, and the photographer Carl McCunn as a means of deepening his and the reader’s understanding of Christopher McCandless. Wealthy and intelligent, Rosellini earned several advanced degrees and then became an exercise fanatic. He killed himself just before embarking on his plan to live out of his backpack for the rest of his life. A master climber who had suffered psychiatric breakdown at different points in his life, Waterman died while attempting to summit Denali, one of the most difficult peaks in the world. The narrator also draws parallels between McCandless and Carl McCunn. The narrator then differentiates McCandless from these three men and suggests a fourth comparison, a 20-year-old named Everett Ruess.

Chapter 9

Davis Gulch

Krakauer opens the chapter by describing a Southwestern canyon called Davis Gulch, a watershed in the midst of the desert. Davis Gulch contains petroglyphs left behind by the Anasazi people, as well as a carving left in 1993 by a young man named Everett Ruess, who, like Christopher McCandless, disappeared into the wild. Krakauer then relates Ruess’s life and the travails and adventures that brought him to Davis Gulch, where he left a final inscription of his name before disappearing.

Ruess was born in 1914 to a middle-class family that lived primarily in Southern California. After a short stint in college, he apprenticed himself to the photographer Edward Weston, built friendships with California artists, and then set out to live as a tramp. He renamed himself, choosing the name “Nemo,” or “no one,” and sought to remove himself from society in favor of an ascetic or pilgrim’s life. Krakauer includes excerpts from Ruess’s correspondence in which he describes the allure of the solitary life. He insists that his correspondents wouldn’t be able to understand how exciting he finds the wilderness. Krakauer links Ruess’s lack of concern for personal safety to McCandless’s.

Krakauer then uses Ruess’s letters to track him from a Mormon settlement in California into Davis Gulch. Apparently, Ruess was expected in Marble Canyon, Arizona and never arrived, leading his parents to organize a search party in March 1935. Ruess is never found. The prevailing assumption remains that he died while climbing in the canyon or drowned, though some locals apparently maintain that they have seen or met him. Krakauer interviews a man named Ken Sleight, who describes Ruess and McCandless as both liking people too much to give them up entirely but disliking them enough never to be able to live in society. Krakauer says he believes that both Ruess and McCandless were like the papar, a group of ancient monks who sailed from Ireland toward Iceland in the fourth century without knowing whether they’d ever find land.

Chapter 10

Fairbanks

Jim Gallien, the same Alaskan who gave Christopher McCandless his final ride into Alaska, sees a front-page news story about the boy’s death based on another story that appeared in TheNew York Times. Because Gallien thinks he knows the identity of the body, he calls the Anchorage police. After struggling to differentiate himself from other tipsters and cranks, Gallien convinces the police he encountered the dead hitchhiker on the Stampede Trail. He can only be so helpful, however. In informing the police that McCandless was from South Dakota, he unknowingly repeats a lie McCandless told him. The police begin an erroneous search for McCandless’s family in South Dakota.

In what Krakauer calls a very fortunate coincidence, a South Dakota friend of Wayne Westerberg then hears a description of Chris McCandless on a radio show. He radios Westerberg, who tunes into the show and then calls the Alaska State Troopers. They don’t believe him and ask him to call back when he has concrete evidence. He calls again and gives them the social security number McCandless used while working at the grain elevator as well as McCandless’s given name. A homicide detective reaches Sam McCandless, Chris McCandless’s half-brother, since the rest of the McCandless family has left Virginia. Sam travels to Alaska and positively identifies a headshot of McCandless. He then heads home to explain to his parents that McCandless is dead.

Chapter 11

Chesapeake Beach

The narrator visits Samuel “Walt” McCandless at his home in Maryland. Walt, a jet propulsion engineer and sensor expert who oversaw a NASA satellite launch, describes his frustrations with and affection for Christopher McCandless. His son, he says, caused his parents great agony despite his kindness. Krakauer then relates Walt McCandless’s past. After college, he went to work in jet propulsion after the launch of Sputnik pushed the United States to pursue space exploration. He married young and was financially successful, but his relationship with his first wife and family fell apart. Walt then met Billie McCandless, Christopher’s mother. Billie McCandless worked as a receptionist at the science park where Walt McCandless was employed. She moved in with Walt McCandless, who already had three children, when she was twenty-two.

Christopher McCandless spent his childhood in an atmosphere of thriftiness and striving as his parents worked together to build a satellite systems consulting company. Fights between Billie and Walt McCandless led to closeness between McCandless and his sister, Carine. The tension was sometimes alleviated by camping trips that may have sparked Christopher’s love of the outdoors. Christopher’s paternal grandfather’s love of camping and climbing may also have contributed. Carine and Christopher were musical children and loved the family dog. McCandless also ran cross country and showed extreme determination to succeed in every task he undertook. Anecdotes from his school friends illustrate both his dislike of his parents and a contradictory unwillingness to complain. Other anecdotes from his parents demonstrate Christopher’s intensity and strong-willed independence, including a run-in with a physics teacher that led to him being failed for not wanting to follow arbitrary rules. Christopher also secretly housed a homeless man on the family’s property. The McCandless family lived comfortably. For example, as their business succeeded Billie and Walt McCandless eventually bought a sailboat and took their children on a cruise.

The narrator next details Christopher McCandless’s extraordinary success working as a manager for a construction firm before college. Subsequently, McCandless purchases the Datsun he will drive to the American West. When McCandless graduates from college, his parents offer to buy him a new car out of the money remaining in his college fund, but he lectures them about the folly of materialism. He donates the money to the charity OXFAM without telling them.

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