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jessica's Reviews > Into the Wild
Into the Wild
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okay. lets address the elephant on goodreads, which is the common theme of essentially bashing chris mccandless in reviews. i have seen so many ranting about how irresponsible and selfish and arrogant and unprepared he was. and i mean, theyre not wrong, but that honestly has nothing to do with the book?
what i love most about this is how objective krakauer is. he neither praises nor critiques mccandless, but presents the facts regarding an unfortunate event in a very interesting and fascinating way. which leads me to believe that many people did not understand the nature of this book.
yes, mccandless thought so highly of himself that he literally went out into the alaskan wilderness, equipped with only a plant guide, and felt confident that he could survive. yes, he ignored the number one rule of boys scouts - to be prepared. yes, he only thought about how his actions affected himself. but man, the manner in which krakauer tells chris' story is so gripping that i couldnt help but get invested in everything that happened. this book reads like a true crime story, but where the only crime committed was a serious lack of judgement by a very misguided individual.
so it seems massively unfair to penalise the book itself because of disagreeing with what a young man did. but hey, to each their own.
↠ 4 stars
what i love most about this is how objective krakauer is. he neither praises nor critiques mccandless, but presents the facts regarding an unfortunate event in a very interesting and fascinating way. which leads me to believe that many people did not understand the nature of this book.
yes, mccandless thought so highly of himself that he literally went out into the alaskan wilderness, equipped with only a plant guide, and felt confident that he could survive. yes, he ignored the number one rule of boys scouts - to be prepared. yes, he only thought about how his actions affected himself. but man, the manner in which krakauer tells chris' story is so gripping that i couldnt help but get invested in everything that happened. this book reads like a true crime story, but where the only crime committed was a serious lack of judgement by a very misguided individual.
so it seems massively unfair to penalise the book itself because of disagreeing with what a young man did. but hey, to each their own.
↠ 4 stars
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Reading Progress
August 31, 2012
– Shelved
August 19, 2017
– Shelved as:
to-read
Started Reading
November 28, 2018
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Finished Reading
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Adrian
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Nov 30, 2018 03:23PM
Well put Jessica, great review !!
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Agree, agree, 100% agree!
yay! so glad im not alone!
I agree I love this book!! I never 100% agreed with the criticism of McCandless either - maybe I just relate to his hate of consumerism too much 😂
hehehe. sounds like youre ready for a camping trip, then! :P
Maybe he just wanted to throw himself into the wilderness almost impulsively? That's why he wasn't prepared?
yeah, mccandless had a very romanticised view when it came to the wilderness, so i can see how some might think the impulsiveness was a part of that charm. and i might be inclined to agree if this wasnt the first time he did something like this. he took a similar trip right after high school, with similar results (except death). so it wasnt his first time doing something like this. also, he made many plans before 'disappearing,' so i wouldnt really say it was impulsive. he was just careless.
Great review! I need to check this one out.
yes! its so interesting - i highly recommend it! i would also suggest checking out his book 'into thin air,' which is his personal account of climbing during the mt. everest disaster. its equally as fascinating!!
THIS was an excellent book, as was Chris' sister's book about this time and the time that came after. Jon Krakauer is an amazing writer and I recommend ANYTHING he writes, especially "into thin air" and "Under the Banner of Heaven".
i completely agree!! i thought 'into thin air' was such a powerful book. i havent heard much about any of his other stuff, but i will definitely look into them. thanks for the recommendations, dawn! :)
Great review, Jessica! Regardless of someone’s opinion of McCandless himself, I agree, the book (which is one of my favorites), is written objectively. I’ve found this to be the case with other books written by Krakauer too, and appreciate this.
How do you read so much!! This is my goal! ❤
brandice - thank you! and yes! krakauer is a fantastic writer! i agree and appreciate it too! and i can understand people not agreeing with mccandless' choices, and even not liking him. but what really bothers me is people giving this book 1 star ratings without even reading it, all because they disapprove of chris and his actions.jessica - oh, its easy. i have no life! lol.
Thank you for this review! This type of review is relevant to so many books. Authors should give us characters we hate and disagree with. Bad decisions are part of being human, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. If we only got characters that were perfect, books and life would be boring.
i completely agree! flawed characters and people are essential to storytelling. i am, however, guilty of rating a book a bit lower if i didnt enjoy or connect with certain characters. and i dont think thats a bad thing. its when people blindly rate/review negatively based solely on a characters actions and not on the book itself. thanks for your thoughts, amber!
I'm glad I found somebody else who would say what I was thinking. I've been disgusted by some of the goodreads reviews on here. Like, the guy died. Krauker is giving us a nuanced, more complicated picture of who McCandless was rather than the whole "read the story in the newspaper and pass moral judgment X or Y" here. I just feel like so many people are so absorbed in this idea of moral judgment that they forget to be a human being is to make mistakes, to sometimes be solipstic or selfish. And as for the hero worshipping, I also feel like a lot of readers are cherry picking this book; Krauker spends a lot of time, and has some heartbreaking details, about the wreckage and heartbreak that McCandless left behind (his parents, the old man that wanted to adopt him). There's admiration, but it's also balanced by other views of McCandless that flesh him out as a character. I was just taken aback by the amount of people that just wanted to put him into some simplifying "I didn't like him" "I disagreed with what he did" "I thought he was selfish" camp. Becuase people are more than that. Anyways, rant over, but glad someone else felt the same way
I just read this book and said about the same thing in my review. You don’t have to agree with his choices to enjoy the book. That would be like reading a book about a serial killer and being like “I don’t agree with what the killer did so 1 star.”
He definitely did praise Chris though...
That's a book review.. Idk why others are passing off judgement on Chris as a book review
You should read "The Wild Truth", because I agree that John does an excellent job of writing; the only problem is he wrote a fictional narrative and passed it off as a biography.
Thanks for your review Jessica! I finished the movie but have a strong feeling that the book would be actually a goodread. Came here for reviews and I was wondering why have people given their judgements about Chris instead of the book! Would surely read this soon. 🙂
Couldn't agree more... It's like giving a bad review of a true crime book because you're disgusted with the crime. Lol... So foolish.
Totally agree. I had just changed my rating from 2 stars to 4 stars, as I realised that although I wasn't keen on the what happened in the book, it was a good read.
Damn... You know, you're right - Even if Krakauer sucked as an author, that would be no excuse for derating him in order just to bash some dumb hippie tree-hugger. I mean, if it weren't for Krakauer we wouldn't have McCandless to bash - amiright?The real problem is that tree-huggers make such tempting targets... Maybe GR needs some sort of a bifurcated Hate/Love scale... or more likely matrix, for rating subjects and authors separately on a per-book basis...
This is exactly what I was thinking
Good review and I generally agree with you. It annoys me to no end to see great books get 1 or 2 stars from a subset of narrow minded people because they're clutching their pearls and "don't like books that have swear words" or "don't like books that have sex scenes." (If they're that concerned, stick to the Christian bookshelf and leave literature to the adults. But I digress...) But... in this case, McCandless was just so totally unlikable that it was difficult to separate the character from the writing. My millennial son gave up after 50 pages because he couldn't stand McCandless and wasn't going to waste any more time reading about his grandiose thoughts.
Thank you! It’s ridiculous to give a nonfiction book a negative review based on its focus. It’d be like giving a history book on the nazis 1 star ‘cuz the nazis were bad.’ Jon Krakauer remains objective and merely presents us a person. People here are reviewing the person rather than the book
If all anyone got out of the book was that McCandless was a "tree hugger" or "unprepared" or "self-serving" and that he was an idiot, they did not read the book carefully nor did they glean the moral of the story "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED." McCandless learned this lesson, but unfortunately did not survive to put it into practice. I do not understand the vitriol and sanctimony of some readers. There are a lot of people on Goodreads who need to look a little deeper into themselves and spend less time reading books in order to pass judgment on the subjects of those books.
People say he was overconfident (which he may have been) however, wouldnt you be? If you travelled across America foraging for most of your food, hopped freight trains, and most significantly, traveled down the Colorado River into Mexico and came back you would probably be pretty confident as well. Additionally, im tired of the "he was unprepared" argument HE WOULD HAVE SURVIVED if he didnt make a mistake which, like Krauker says, almost anyone would have made in Chris's position. Also, like the book says, there was NO mention that the seeds he ate were poisonous in ANY books at the time let alone any books he had access to.
"but that honestly has nothing to do with the book?" I disagree, McCandless's actions have everything to do with the book. Krakauer's side is very clear, and he glorifies McCandless because he relates to him. Krakauer many times relates himself to McCandless in a way that makes it seem like Chris is a younger version of himself.
I agree that the quality of the writing is what should be judged in a review, but I disagree with your assessment that the author is objective. From the inception of the book, he believes this is a story that deserves to be told. That Chris’s death deserves this level of research and respect. He practically deifies his intelligence, charisma, and grit. He dedicates a chapter to telling stories of other people who met similar deaths, then tells the reader that Chris cannot be compared to them and their faults: he is better than them. That is the reason for my poor review. I wanted an objective look at the story and instead read all about this kid being put on a dangerous pedestal.
