But Chris resorted to walk into the wilderness, deep in Alaska. I came across the book “Into the Wild”, which is a fine blend of adventure, philosophy and the truth.[break]
Writer Jon Krakauer starts off with an appreciable plea to his readers that the book might not be an impartial account of McCandless’s life. Indeed, he has drawn a close line with the events of his own life and those of McCandless’s.
Waking up, eating, defecating, going to work, coming back to the same old house, and repeating this tedious and yet easy routine may not have particular attraction to it; however, most of us are content with this sort of life. McCandless would have loathed this lifestyle.
“The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” This is an excerpt taken from a letter that McCandless wrote to his friend Ron, to encourage him to see the beauty of life amidst constant monotony. He wanted Ron to see that delight can be absorbed from each and every thing that has been created by God. But it is upon us to find it by abandoning the conventional and secure life and heading off to the wild.
There are some staunch criticisms recorded by the writer. One of them describes the “McCandless types” as “…idealistic, energetic young guys who overestimated themselves, underestimated the country, and ended up in trouble.” While there might be top-graded logic denying this, there seems nothing that McCandless left proven after his not surprising death. He starved to death in the deep Alaskan wild, inside an abandoned wrecked bus. His death repeated the fact that if one goes out into the jungle without enough preparations, one can perish.
Defending McCandless’s and his own actions, the writer wrote an account of his ascent of a mountain called Devil’s Thumb. With a dangerous, way too adventurous, or rather a foolhardy attitude, the writer had an immense desire to climb. On the top, he found nothing. At the end, a near death experience when a slip of a foot could throw you hundreds of feet down the ice glacier, he found nothing.
Climbing a mountain did not correct the mistakes of his life; he saw no miracles. However, he notes a tempting spiritual experience: “…I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman’s sex.”
What struck me the most as a reader was the moment when McCandless realized the inevitability of his death. It must have taken a great effort for a stubborn idealist like him to acknowledge his possible death and leave an SOS help note. No matter how philosophically tuned you are, the basic fact is that you do want to live. Nobody would want to die.
The ultimate truth – death – enveloped McCandless in its arms. Describing the incident, the writer Jon Krakauer writes, “Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.” It might be arguable to describe McCandless as a monk; however, he did show the overwhelming, sometimes seemingly lunatic, desire of humans to take risks and to go for adventure.
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