Into the Wild Book Analysis: Alex Mccandless’s Motives

Jon Krakauer’s book, Into The Wild, tells the life story of a young man, Alex McCandless, on his adventures in western america. After graduating from college, McCandless fleas west in order to escape his current monotonous life, with the ultimate goal goal of living away from society in Alaska. While he is actually submerged in the Alaskan wilderness, however, he lasts 113 days before dying of starvation. In pursuit to know more about McCandless interesting life, Krakauer creates a book with outstanding reporting of those who were apart of McCandless journey. The information he obtains reveals Alex’s unique personality and gives the reader insight on his motives for his actions. Throughout the book, it becomes more clear that these motives are a disgust for modern civilization, desire for the unknown, and stubbornness that led Alex McCandless to live and die in the wilderness.

McCandless grew up in a well-to-do family, graduated from college with flying colors, and even had $25,000 in savings before starting a new chapter of his life. Yet, he throws it all away and instead abandons both his family and fortune. He did this because he was simply fed up with societies course. This is further described in the book when the author talks about McCandless departure as a way of leaving “a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence” (22). Here, the author describes what he believes to be McCandless’s viewpoint of himself in society. He didn’t feel like he belonged and was sure he would not continue living in such a setting in his future years. Besides feeling like an outsider to the life around him, McCandless also had a strong disliking to how “he had spent the previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college” (22). It is clear from this quote that McCandless felt that attending college and graduating was what everyone else wanted him to do. To him, college was...