Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer (1996)
“A young man walked away from everything America told him to want — and died for it. Jon Krakauer can't stop thinking about why.”
At a Glance
In April 1992, twenty-four-year-old Christopher McCandless hitchhiked into the Alaskan wilderness with a ten-pound bag of rice and a .22 caliber rifle. Four months later, a moose hunter found his decomposed body in an abandoned bus. Jon Krakauer — himself a former young man who courted death in the mountains — pieces together McCandless's journey and argues that his idealism, however reckless, deserves to be understood rather than dismissed.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Into the Wild spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list after publication and has never gone out of print. It transformed a coroner's report into one of the most debated questions in American culture: was McCandless a hero or a fool? The debate — conducted in classrooms, online, and in the letters Krakauer still receives — has not resolved. That unresolvability is the book's gift.
Diction Profile
Clear, precise, accessible — investigative journalism raised to literary standard. Krakauer's own voice is measured; McCandless's voice (in letters and journal excerpts) is romantic and declamatory.
Moderate