Review: Into the Wild

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, the story of Chris McCandless is a difficult one. You could paint him as a privileged white boy who died because he was too arrogant to understand his limitations or you could see him as an adventurer who sang to his own tune. Being able to relate to McCandless because of his own adventurous but reckless youth, Krakauer more leans to the latter interpretation. But, I lean more towards the former. If McCandless had just listened to one of the several people who tried to offer him advice, he may well have survived his adventure.

Then again scores of people do really stupid, arrogant things when they are young - they're just lucky that their stupid, arrogant didn't prove fatal and it is just luck. We've all had " oh Sh*t!" moments when we've realised our ill thought out plan could have gotten us injured/killed had things got awry. That's why McCandless's story is so tragic. The luck was the difference between his folly getting him killed and him having a "oh sh*t!" moment. Mind you, you do wonder that had he survived, if he would have kept doing reckless thing until his luck ran out etc.



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