FINAL BOOK REVIEW

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Chapter 12

Annandale

The search for the rationale behind McCandless’s trip into the wild leads Krakauer to provide a series of anecdotes. After his high school graduation, McCandless takes an extended trip through the American West. Before he leaves, he gives his father a gift of an expensive telescope. While on his trip, he calls home infrequently before falling out of touch entirely. He returns gaunt and bearded just before he is to begin college at Emory in Atlanta. His parents move McCandless into college the next week. He works for the student newspaper and makes high grades. He begins to unravel, however, becoming anti-social. The narrator reveals the reason for McCandless’s change. During his trip, he had discovered that his father had maintained a relationship with his first wife and his other children, heading two households. He had a son with his first wife after McCandless was born, before Walt and Billie moved to the East Coast.

Krakauer then delves into the deeper, psychological motivations behind McCandless’s response to the secret. He posits that McCandless must have been unable to forgive his father, even though he was much more accepting of flaws in other people. Instead, two years after he learned his father’s secret, McCandless became irrational, publishing erratic political opinions in the student newspaper and living in an almost entirely unfurnished apartment without a telephone his senior year. In 1990, after he graduated, he gave all the money his parents had given him for law school, got in the yellow Datsun, and drove away. The narrator relates Billie McCandless’s worry for her son and a moment in 1992, when McCandless had been missing from Atlanta for two years. Billie McCandless woke in the middle of the night, convinced her son was calling for her help.

Chapter 13

Virginia Beach

The narrator visits Christopher McCandless’s younger sister, Carine McCandless, and interviews her about his disappearance and death. She describes for Krakauer her extraordinarily close relationship with Christopher as well as their gentle disagreement over materialism. She describes her brother’s love for the family dog, who now lives with her, and narrates the moment when her husband came home from work to tell her that Christopher had been found dead. She tells the story of visiting Alaska to bring back her brother’s ashes after officials in Alaska have cremated his body. There she was given a number of Christopher McCandless’s belongings: his book of plant lore, his rifle, and several rolls of his film.

Krakauer describes the consequences of Carine McCandless’s grief. Her sorrow over her brother’s death causes her to refuse food until friends begin to suspect she is suffering from anorexia. The same was apparently true of their mother, Billie McCandless, though Walt McCandless gained considerable weight by eating compulsively. At the end of Chapter Thirteen, Carine McCandless revisits her collection of photographs from McCandless’s last days, which she had developed from the film given her along with his remains. She breaks down weeping, which prompts the narrator to reflect on McCandless’s selfishness. Carine McCandless insists that she still does not understand why her brother left.

Chapter 14

The Stikine Ice Cap

Krakauer's decision at age 23 to climb the Devil's Thumb Mountain on the Stikine Ice Cap in Alaska. Krakauer's goal was to summit the mountain's northwest face—the most treacherous side to climb. He drove to Gig Harbor, Washington, where he hitched a ride on a fishing boat for the five-day trip to Petersburg, Alaska. From there he grabbed a ride with some tree planters, crossing the 25-mile span between the island where Petersburg is located to mainland Alaska and the mountain.

After the planters dropped him off, Krakauer trudged across the glacier. When he reached the snow line, he switched to cross-country skis. Four days later, on May 6, he reached the plateau of the Stikine Ice Cap and set up camp. Because of a blizzard, the plane carrying Krakauer's supplies for his three- to four-week stay in the barren spot couldn't make the drop until May 10. The following day, Krakauer began his climb up the Devil's Thumb, making it to 3,700 feet before he hit rock and had to descend to his camp.

Chapter 15

The Stikine Ice Cap

 

Krakauer completes his story about his challenge of the northwest face of the Devil's Thumb. For three days after he called a halt to his first attempt to reach the summit, he was confined to his tent because of heavy snow and high winds. Shaken by the very real fact that he almost died on the mountain, he spent this time convincing himself why he must try again. Reaching the summit was much more appealing to his ego than facing his father or returning to his construction job in defeat. After making his decision, he wanted to eat and lit his stove to make his breakfast, accidentally setting fire to part of his tent and burning his hand. He was more upset about ruining part of his father's expensive tent than hurting his hand and became convinced that he must complete his mission.

Krakauer discusses his relationship with his father, Lewis, who he describes as "kind and generous" but also "autocratic" and highly competitive. Lewis had strong ambitions for his son, Jon, to become a doctor and made efforts to shape Jon's future in that direction from early childhood. This caused a rift to develop between father and son, and Jon chose not to go to medical school but to become "a carpenter and climbing bum." Two decades later, Jon watches his father suffer from extreme physical and mental illness, including a suicide attempt. Jon changes his mind about his father. He accepts Lewis's imperfections and admits that his own stubborn anger contributed to their estrangement.

Krakauer resumes his story about climbing the Devil's Thumb. The next day, he started to scale the northwest face of the Devil's Thumb again but had to descend because another blizzard smacked into the mountain. Whiteout conditions forced him to dig out a shallow hole, crawl under a ledge, and wrap himself in a protective covering until the storm ended and he could return to his camp. The next day he chose to climb the less demanding southeast face. This time, he reached the summit in triumph. A week later, he sprawled on the stone-covered beach as he waited for the boat to return him to Petersburg and civilization.

Chapter 16

The Alaska Interior

McCandless left Carthage and crossed the Canadian border on April 18. On April 24 he arrived in Liard River Hotsprings and caught a ride with Gaylord Stuckey, a man who was delivering an RV to a dealership in Fairbanks. McCandless bought a 10-pound bag of rice and a book on edible plants. Stuckey implored the hiker to call his parents, even giving the young man his credit card number to do so. McCandless promised to call Stuckey after his sojourn in the wild but waffled about talking to his parents, saying, "Maybe I will and maybe I won't." A few days later, Gallien picked up McCandless and drove him to the Stampede Trail.

Because he arrived at the Teklanika River before the summer thaw from the nearby Outer Range had begun, McCandless was able to cross the waterway with relative ease. He discovered Bus 142 by the Sushana River and set up camp. At first he had trouble hunting but gradually improved. He also found plenty of berries to eat. On May 19 he decided to hike west. Again this time he had trouble killing game to eat and he found that the thaw had transformed the once solid ground into a quagmire, making trudging across it too difficult. He returned to the bus.

At the end of the month, he wrote "LONG TERM" in his journal and created a "to do" list as if he planned to stay on. Krakauer notes that McCandless was much closer to civilization than he may have realized, with a highway, a road, and four cabins within hiking distance. On June 9 he killed a moose, but when he mistakenly tried to smoke the meat to preserve it, he failed and had to throw the meat to the wolves, which he felt guilty about. On July 3 he hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, content with his retreat, and hiked away from camp. Krakauer speculates that McCandless might have wanted to return to civilization and re-establish contact with his family, but no one knows the truth. McCandless found that the full-blown summer thaw had turned the Teklanika River into a rampaging torrent. He returned to Bus 142 and wrote, "Disaster ... Rained in. River looks impossible. Lonely, scared." Krakauer considers the different ways that McCandless might have tried to cross the river, concluding that some were too dangerous, while those that were possible were still "a very risky proposition." McCandless was managing to survive in the wild and chose "the prudent course" of waiting for the water to drop so he could cross the river.

Chapter 17

The Stampede Trail

Almost exactly a year after McCandless turned away from the Teklanika River, Krakauer visits the bus where McCandless. Traveling with three companions, he uses his topographic map to locate a large aluminum basket strung across the river. The reader learns that this infrastructure left behind by a hydrological survey team, and allows for easy crossing of the river. Krakauer reflects that McCandless must not have wanted to know about nearby traces of civilization. He brought no map with him, which also prevented him from knowing that he could have crossed the Teklanika at another point only a few hours’ walk from his original crossing point. Krakauer and his friends then ride across the Teklanika river in the surveyor’s basket. As he is riding across, Krakauer experiences a moment of fear and exhilaration and yells before he realizes that he is in no danger.

As the four hike progresses, Krakauer admits that he is glad he has people with him, and that for once in his many travels in Alaska he finds the landscape unnerving. Later that night, at around 9 PM, they reach McCandless’s bus and are struck by the bones of all the animals he shot, which are still scattered around it. Before entering the bus, Krakauer takes the opportunity to reflect at length on the presence of a nearby moose skeleton. He recalls that in his early interviews, the first people to find McCandless’s body thought it was a caribou skeleton. They assumed McCandless had mistaken a caribou for a moose, which would have signified his unpreparedness. However, Krakauer writes, after the publication of his original article in Outdoor Magazine, McCandless’s own photographs proved the animal to have been a moose.

Inside the bus, the narrator observes a wide array of possessions and supplies that once belonged to McCandless. The sight unnerves and moves him, he relates. He lists McCandless’s toiletries, clothes, and books. Krakauer also takes special interest in gifts that other people gave McCandless, identifying Jim Gallien’s boots by his name written on them and a custom machete scabbard made by Ronald Franz. Krakauer also reads the graffiti written in the bus by both McCandless and other visitors. He begins to feel nauseated by how eerie the scene appears and leaves the bus. He and the others cook moose meat on the same grill McCandless used to prepare his own meals. As they eat, they discuss McCandless’s death.

Krakauer then describes the fate of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, to whom McCandless attracted comparison after his death because of his perceived lack of preparedness and his hubris. He cites the artist and explorer John Muir and the writer Henry David Thoreau’s nature writings to attempt to make sense of McCandless’s instincts and to differentiate his arrogance from Franklin’s. McCandless was prepared and had a different philosophy. He wasn’t there to conquer. Instead, he had come in search of a blend of self-sacrifice and independently achieved happiness. Krakauer and two others stay up late drinking and attempting to determine what kind of person McCandless was. Then they fall asleep.

Chapter 18

The Stampede Trail

Unable to cross the Teklanika River, Christopher McCandless heads back to the bus. He hunts. He also underlines several key passages in Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago that address the prospect of living a modest life of service to others. He leaves an enthusiastic note beside a passage saying that happiness is only real when shared with other people. Krakauer interprets this to mean that he may have had an epiphany because of his journey. McCandless’s diary also suggests that he was planning to go back to society. In his diary, McCandless left a note that he had been sickened by wild potato or Hedysarumalpinum seeds. But this leads Krakauer to more questions. H. alpinum seeds contain a toxin when they begin to sprout, but why would McCandless have eaten so many sprouted seeds? McCandless could have confused wild potato with wild sweet pea, a similar-looking species.

Krakauer then relates his own attempt to verify that wild sweet pea could have poisoned McCandless. Krakauer details the arctic explorations of Sir John Richardson, a Scottish adventurer who included in his journals an anecdote about a native woman who nearly dies from eating wild sweet pea. He recalls that, in his first article in Outdoor Magazine, he reported with confidence that wild sweet pea killed Christopher McCandless. But after its publication, he began to doubt that Christopher McCandless had eaten wild sweet pea. He investigates further, but scientists find no toxins in the samples of wild sweet pea Krakauer sends. Instead of reaching any conclusions, Krakauer continues to read scientific literature. After several years, he stumbles upon an article describing a mold that produces a toxic alkaloid.

Krakauer relates that he is convinced McCandless ate moldy wild potato seeds and was poisoned. He describes what it might have been like for McCandless to die of starvation and quotes from his last diary entries, which become terse. On his hundredth day in the wild, McCandless leaves a jubilant note that ends in the admission he will likely die. Krakauer then outlines yet another difficulty McCandless faced. Without a map, McCandless was unable to realize that he had only to walk a few hours north to find cabins, though he might not have found many supplies, since those cabins had been vandalized. Certain dogsledders and rangers in the area indeed suspected McCandless of the vandalism, but Krakauer expresses doubts that McCandless was responsible, since his diary never describes them.

In early August 1992, Christopher McCandless continues to try to hunt and cook food for himself. On August 12, 1992 he leaves a note and goes to forage for berries. Krakauer briefly speculates why McCandless didn’t then start an S.O.S. fire to attract a plane. No planes would have flown over the bus anyway and a fire would have harmed the wilderness McCandless loved. Krakauer then describes the symptoms associated with death by starvation and the last documents Christopher McCandless left behind. He tears out a page from a book called Education of a Wandering Man. The page contains some lines from a poem by Robinson Jeffers that describe death and stoicism. On it, McCandless writes a goodbye message claiming that he has had a happy life. In the last lines of Into the Wild, Krakauer describes the peace in McCandless’s eyes in the last photograph he took of himself and compares him to a monk.

Epilogue

The narrator returns with Billie McCandless and Walt McCandless to Alaska by helicopter. They go inside the abandoned bus where Christopher McCandless died. Billie McCandless enters first and reviews her son’s belongings. She smells a pair of jeans he left behind and tells her husband that they smell like her son. She also recognizes silverware he took from their house in Virginia. They leave behind a plaque memorializing McCandless’s death and leave a suitcase of supplies, including Christopher’s childhood bible, and a note urging runaways to contact their families. Both Billie McCandless and Walt McCandless admit they are glad they came. Billie specifies that she might have found Christopher’s decision to live in the wild admirable if he had not died. Krakauer and Walt and Billie McCandless get back into the helicopter. After takeoff, the bus dwindles in the distance and then vanishes from sight.

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~THE END~