Book Review: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

 

A book I've wanted to read ever since I heard of the story and especially after I watched the movie. Let's dive in.

In the 1990s, a young man known as Christopher McCandless (renaming himself Alexander Supertramp) decides to turn his back on society to make a journey and truly live life. The author of this non-fiction book recounts what we know of McCandless' journey and the unfortunate end it had.

This book is precisely what I wanted going in, being what inspired the movie with the same title. It certainly delivered, giving us a rundown of Supertramp's journey across (and even outside of) the States, based on McCandless own diary entries, items or messages of him which have been found, and people who knew him. It's a clear rundown of the events and, after the part about McCandless' journey is over, there's room for discussions about (among others) his cause of death and several people like McCandless throughout history who also turned their backs on society to make a journey.

This part of the book is also where my issue with it. Aside from the book not being super in-depth (which I can't fully blame it for, I mean we only know limited things about McCandless' journey based on the sparse sources we have), this section about two other men who went on a similar trip to Christopher's just doesn't really feel like it has to be here. 

I get the point the author is trying to make by having these chapters dedicated to these men, to contrast them against McCandless' and see where they overlap and are different, but the fact that entire chapters are dedicated to them is just too much, leading to these chapters feeling rather disjointed from the main book, which is dedicated to McCandless' and his trip. These sections about these men in similar situations certainly could've been included, but they really didn't have to be multiple chapters long. Just a brief mention of them and how they contrast to Supertramp would've been enough, and the book wouldn't have felt so disjointed and like it's suddenly about these other dudes. 

But that's really my main issue. The rest of the book is very good and delivers. So not a perfect rating, but a recommendation nonetheless!

Rating: 4/5