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.”
EraContemporary Nonfiction
Pages224
Difficulty★★☆☆☆ Moderate
AP Appearances4
Character Analysis
A genuine idealist whose philosophy was coherent and whose execution was fatal. He was not mentally ill, not careless in the ordinary sense, and not unaware of risk. He accepted risk as the price of authenticity — and paid it. The question the book refuses to answer is whether he was right to pay it.
How They Speak
His writing is formal and literary — full of allusion to Tolstoy, London, Thoreau, Byron. His speech (reported by witnesses) was direct and egalitarian.