The author, Jon Krakauer's purpose for writing this book was to tell the amazing story of Chris McCandless. After hearing about McCandless, Krakauer became completely obsessed with the story and contacted witnesses, acquaintances, and family members of Chris' in order to obtain all the information that he could for the novel. Krakauer spent years following the same trails Chris traveled, reading his journals, and even reading articles he wrote for Emory's student newspaper to gain the deepest possible level of understanding. McCandless and Krakauer had similar passions, demons, and ambitions. Similar to McCandless, Krakauer spent time at Devils Thumb to be in a state of independence and solitude. Both McCandless and Krakauer most likely experienced deep moments of loneliness and can relate. Krakauer first became intrigued by McCandless's story in 1993, four years before Into the Wild was published, when he wrote a detailed article for Outside magazine about McCandless called "Death of an Innocent." Krakauer's purpose of writing this book contributes to the writing style he used to write the book. Looking for information and answers, Krakauer traveled around the country at different, random times trying to find evidence, people that knew Chris and any information that was known of his story. This chaos that the author experienced before writing Into The Wild eventually became the backbone for the structure of the book itself. Knowing that his experience searching for answers was chaotic just like Chris' journey, Krakauer wrote the book in a random, unstructured order by jumping from different places, different times of day, different trails that Chris took, and different years that these events occurred.
"Death of an Innocent" published in Outside magazine 1993 | |
File Size: | 112 kb |
File Type: | doc |