Sparknotes Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Essay Example for Free

Sparknotes Extremely Loud and Incredibly conclusion EssayThis chapter introduces one of the primary motifs of Into the Wild, that of documents. Because the records subject, Christopher McCandless, has died before author Jon Krakauer can meet him, Krakauer must rely on the testimony of the people McCandless encountered in order to stitch together the taradiddle of the young mans journey and especially on the documents McCandless left substructure. The first of these documents is McCandlesss S.O.S. note. Others go away include his journals, the notes he influence in the sustains he read, graffito he scratched into various surfaces, and photos he took of himself. To these Krakauer will add maps of the places McCandless visited, relevant quotations from a wide variety of authors, and all the same a brief memoir of the authors own young manhood, inserted near the end of Into the Wild. All of these enrich our rationality of McCandless and help us to believe that the amazing story we read in Into the Wild really happened.The detail that someone as articulate and effective at communicating as McCandless died alone, having create verbally a engaging of letter (the S.O.S. note) that went unread until it was too late, is an example of irony. Also ironic McCandless, who encountered no one during the four months amid his entrance into the bush and his death there of famishment, is discovered not by one fellow trekker unless by five all within days of McCandlesss death.Chapter 3This chapter begins to explore the character of Christopher McCandless in depth. cold from being a stereotypical slacker, he was hard-working, according to Wayne Westerberg. The fact that he had read the long and ticklish War and Peace indicates that McCandless was intelligent and studious. (Indeed, we learn as well in this chapter that he was a mastery at selective Emory University.)Most indicative of all with respect to McCandlesss character are the things he renounced $24, 000 and his very name. In doing so, he confabms to prolong been rejecting his family and what he saw as their materialistic values. This information doesnt fully relieve wherefore Christopher McCandless would forge alone into the Alaskan wilderness, besides it begins to address the motivation for this bizarre act.The fact that McCandless never told his parents what he planned to do could indicate a lack of resolve on his part, or regular(a) cowardice. It alike shows that the young man thoughtful enough to present Wayne Westerberg with an inscribed copy of one of his preferent books was bawlous enough regarding his parents feelings to leave them in the dark regarding their sons whereabouts.Considering that he howevertually would die of starvation, McCandlesss gift of $24,000 to OXFAM, an validation dedicated to fighting hunger, is an example of irony.Chapter 4This chapter unearths additional motivation for McCandlesss irrational Alaska trek to come. During his duration i n Mexico, he lived on vigour more(prenominal) than than five pounds of rice and what marine life he could charge from the sea, and Krakauer points out that this may control accounted for the young mans belief that he could live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. (Undeniably, McCandless proves himself remarkably capable in this chapter, canoeing through hundreds of miles of hostile landscape and even crossing an outside(a) border undetected.)And nevertheless other questions remain unanswered. His mother says that Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run. She doesnt say why this is so, however.The motif of familiarity emerges further in these p mount ups, as McCandless, who earlier struck up a friendship with Wayne Westerberg, befriends Jan Burres and her boyfriend Bob. One of Into the Wilds many ironies a young man compelled toward a solitary life, who eventually will die alone, was quite gregariou s and made friends easily. Another irony McCandless abandons a car, the only problem with which is a wet battery, and burns his cash but quits a job when it becomes clear that he riding habit be paid for his hard work. He has a complicated relationship with money and possessions, to say the least.Chapter 5In this chapter, a theme introduced when McCandless presented a copy of War and Peace to Wayne Westerberg reappears the young mans abiding cheat of literature. Since childhood, he was obsessed with the novels and stories of Jack London, who condemned capitalism and glorified nature. According to Krakauer, however, McCandless forgot he was reading fiction and conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent unspoiled a single winter in the pairing and that hed died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a senseless drunk, obese and pathetic.Krakauer characterizes his protagonist more deeply by means of contrast with those who surround him n ote that even at the Slabs, where snowbirds, rubber tramps, and other antiestablishment types congregated, McCandless was an anomaly an somebody who wanted life to be not easier (as more or less of the habitus of the Slabs presumably do) but more difficult. Thus he prepares at the Slabs for a life in the harsh wilderness of Alaska.Notice as well the extent to which author Krakauer relies on documents left behind by McCandless to tell the young mans story. During this part of his journey, he ceases regularly keeping a journal, and Into the Wild becomes sketchier, more reliant on authorial inference.Chapter 6The theme of this chapter is the astonishing ability of Christopher McCandless to win friends and influence people. Not only did he befriend the octogenarian Ronald Franz, but he convinced the old man to channel his ways fundamentally at a time in life when most people adopt settled down for good. It is important to understand that McCandless fled society not because he couldnt get along with others, but because he chose to be alone.The fact that McCandless achieved this effect by means of a letter speaks to the power of the written word. Remember that he was elysian to head into the wild by books he read (Tolstoys, Jack Londons, and others) and that it is a magazine article which informs the hitchhiker Franz picks up at chapters end that McCandless has died, thus inspiring the old man to impart up on life.Chapter 7Regarding McCandlesss character, it is interesting and of course believable that he can be intelligent, hardworking, and resilient, yet lack mechanical dexterity and perhaps even common sense. While the former characteristic, his awkwardness with machines, is important in ways that he manages to recover from (as in the abandonment of his car), the latter, his difficulty being just intelligible sensible, will commence a greater impact.McCandlesss rage toward his parents, and particularly his father, is something that many of those who me et him pick up on. It seems to be their lifestyle more than anything else that McCandless is rejecting when he flees the conventional center-class American way of life, though why it so repels him is never made completely clear by Into the Wild. It is not uncommon for men and women of Christopher McCandlesss age to flee their parents particular ways of doing things (psychology even has a term for this dynamic reaction formation), but seldom is the response so extreme, so complete. The degree of McCandlesss renunciation of his familys values is a large part of what makes Krakauers book so fascinating.Finally, there is something admirable about McCandlesss utter devotion to what he believes in. It is easy to be inspired by books and the ideas they espouse, but not so easy to live the kind of life envisioned by thinkers like Tolstoy and London. McCandless talks the talk in a way that alienates fewer listeners than one would predict, but he walks the walk, too which may account for th e fact that so many of those he encountered continued to listen.Chapter 8This chapter offers scope for, and thus perspective on, McCandlesss situation. By quoting from some of the many outraged responses to his article, Krakauer shares with the reader the typical reaction to McCandlesss story smug superiority laced with disbelief that anyone could be so foolhardy.And yet, as the examples of Rosselini, Waterman, and McCunn demonstrate, McCandless is hardly the only individual impelled to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. At the same time, these others provide Krakauer with an fortune to highlight McCandlesss uniqueness the author characterizes him by contrast with his predecessors. Similar to Rosselini and Waterman, Christopher McCandless was a seeker and had an impractical spell with the harsh side of nature, the author writes. Like Waterman and McCunn, he lacked common sense. McCandless was unlike Waterman in that he was mentally stable. And in contrast to McCunn, McC andless didnt expect to be saved.Although he was rash, Krakauer summarizes, McCandless wasnt incompetent he wouldnt have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasnt a nutcase, he wasnt a sociopath, he wasnt an outcast. McCandless was something else. . . . A pilgrim perhaps.Chapter 9This is a second consecutive chapter in which the author attempts to illuminate McCandlesss character by comparing and contrasting it to those of his predecessors. In doing so, Krakauer further convinces the reader that although McCandless was unique, the impulses that drove him were not unprecedented. Nor are these impulses an exclusively American phenomenon. In fact, although rare, the drive toward loneliness crosses continents and millennia, as the example of the Irish monks demonstrates.Chapter 10By flashing forward to McCandlesss death, Krakauer intensifies the drama of his story. He reminds us that McCandlesss adventure ends tragically. In addition, the author emphasizes the young mans connections to those whose lives he touched friends Gallien and Westerberg, as well as MCandlesss relatives.The earlier two chapters have emphasized McCandlesss commonalities with others who have sought adventure and solitude in the wild. This short chapter reminds us that, although it was not unique, McCandlesss story was noteworthy, newsworthy it was covered not only in Alaska but in the subject area press.Chapter 11This chapter asks more questions than it answers and understandably, since the riddles it poses cannot be solved definitively. Are Christopher McCandlesss parents responsible for their sons death? Was his personality shaped by, or even inherited from, them? Could his parents have interceded and altered his behavior, thereby changing his fate?For that matter, what exactly was McCandless rebelling against, aside from middle class ennui? Also, wouldnt it have been more productive for him to have resumed his work on behalf of the homeless, hungry, or disfranchise after college, ins tead of indulging his whimsical notions of (his own) survival?Chapter 12Two factors emerge in this chapter that clear contributed to McCandlesss flight into the wilderness and his eventual death.First, Walt McCandless comments that Chris was good at almost eitherthing he ever tried . . . which made him supremely overconfident. This bit of characterization goes a long way toward explaining McCandlesss bewildering lack of preparation for his Alaskan adventure. in that respect is no evidence that he failed at much, if anything, during his childhood and adolescence, which may have exacerbated the hubris naturally felt by many young adults.As to why McCandlesss overconfidence found its outlet in a thoroughgoing rejection of his parents bourgeois values and his family altogether the information that emerges in this chapter about his fathers double life could well have offered the motivation. Krakauer doesnt linger on this episode, but if nothing else, it seems to have provided the match that lit McCandlesss short fuse.Chapter 13During the shroud ride home with Chriss remains, his sister Carine eats every scrap of food the cabin attendants set in front of her. Soon afterward, however, she discovers she has no appetite and loses so much weight that friends think she has become anorectic. Chriss mother also stops eating, losing eight pounds. His father, Walt, responds the opposite way, putting on eight pounds.Though both domineering eating and loss of appetite are not uncommon responses to stress and grief, it is hard not to see the McCandless familys food-related behaviors as connected to Chriss demise. It is as if Billie and Carine are identifying with him, feeling Chriss pain, while Walt is compensating for what killed his son though none of them are doing what they do intentionally, or even consciously.Chapter 14Up to this point in Into the Wild, author Jon Krakauer has maintained journalistic objectivity, or at least the appearance of objectivity. In th is chapter he abandons that perspective. Note, however, that Krakauers integrity as a journalist is not compromised, since he is entirely up-front about the experiences he shares in common with his subject, McCandless. In fact, it would be more ethically suspect if Krakauer did not divulge that he had his own into the wild experience as a young man. Because of his candor, readers are able to take this into account when the author views McCandlesss activities with some sympathy.And as a solvent of reading this chapter and the one that follows, the reader moves closer to McCandless and his perspective. Not only Rosselini, Waterman, McCunn, and Reuss (as well as the Irish monks described) have shared McCandlesss impulses, but the author himself. Behavior that seemed utterly bizarre, at the start of Into the Wild, is becoming easier to conceive of with every successive chapter.Chapter 15his chapter further develops the motif of fathers and sons, suggesting explicitly that sons often re bel against their fathers at the same time that they are powerless to resist paternal traits they have inherited. Clearly Krakauer believes that McCandless was driven to do what he did in large measure by his relationship with father Walt.And this is only part of what Krakauer believes he shared with McCandless. They also shared hubris. It is easy, when you are young, he writes, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something gravely enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw younker who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic.Which is not to say that Jon Krakauer believes his younger self to have been identical to Christopher McCandless in every respect. Krakauer says he wasnt as intelligent as McCandless and didnt possess his lofty ideals but young Krakauer was also, crucially, a superior outdoorsman.Cha pter 16This chapter, the heart of Into the Wild, reconstructs McCandlesss climactic Alaska adventure, following him into the bush and observing his admirable survival skills. Although Krakauers book is an adventure story, Into the Wild is also a study in character, and Chapter Sixteen is no exception. McCandless is revealed in the red deer episode to be highly ethical and deeply sympathetic the reader cannot help being go by the enormity of the young mans despair over wasting his kill.By the same token, McCandlesss lack of prescience and his hubris, apparent in a low-level way prior to this time, now yield consequences that will be fatal. He did not anticipate that melting snow would swell the bodies of water he crossed on his way into the bush. And his arrogant refusal to bring a map prevents McCandless from learning that, despite its increased size, the river is fordable upriver another in a series of ironies that punctuate this bookChapter 17The ironies multiply in this, the books penult chapter. The basket that Krakauer and his companions discover at the U.S.G.S. station has been secured by hunters to the side of the river on which McCandless camped so as to make crossing the Teklanika harder for outsiders. If hed known about it, the author writes, crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been a trivial matter. Because he had no topographic map, however, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close at hand.In another irony, McCandless was close to not only the abandoned gauging station but three empty hunt cabins, as well. Did he really go into the wild after all? Undoubtedly he was life history in a hostile environment during the months he spent in Alaska, but some wouldnt call the area he inhabited the wilderness at all.Chapter 18Did McCandless finally come to forgive his family, as evinced by the HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED inscription he wrote toward the end of his life? peradventure but note that in all of his writings, the re is nothing that explicitly reaches out to his parents or his sister, Carine. McCandless never acknowledges them, even to say goodbye.Note, too, that Krakauers theory on McCandlesss death, that it was caused by mold on wild potato seeds, is just that a theory. It is not definitive. To some degree it is beside the point anyway, since one could argue that it wasnt so much starvation that killed McCandless as arrogance and shortsightedness.