MOVIE TRAILER
Watch the movie trailer
and make a list of all the
details you know/can infer
from it. What do you know
about Chris McCandless
and this book/movie? What
predictions do you have?
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=g7ArZ7VD-QQ
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Read the following excerpt from the Author’s Note. Then, discuss your first impressions and
reactions with your group. Finally, explain why author Jon Krakauer wrote this book.
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In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and
walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later his decomposed
body was found by a party of moose hunters.
Shortly after the discovery of the corpse, I was asked by the editor of Outside magazine to
report on the puzzling circumstances of the boy’s death…
Working on a tight deadline, I wrote a nine-thousand-word article, which ran in the
January 1993 issue of the magazine, but my fascination with McCandless remained long after
that issue of Outside was replaced on the newsstands by more current journalistic fare. I was
haunted by the particulars of the boy’s starvation and by vague, unsettling parallels between
events in his life and those in my own. Unwilling to let McCandless go, I spent more than a year
retracing the convoluted path that led to his death in the Alaska taiga, chasing down details of
his peregrinations with an interest that bordered on obsession. In trying to understand
McCandless, I inevitably came to reflect on other, larger subjects as well: the grip wilderness
has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain
mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons. The result of
this meandering inquiry is the book now before you.
I won’t claim to be an impartial biographer. McCandless’s strange tale struck a personal
note that made a dispassionate rendering of the tragedy impossible. Through most of the
book, I have tried—and largely succeeded, I think—to minimize my authorial presence. But let
the reader be warned: I interrupt McCandless’s story with fragments of a narrative drawn from
my own youth. I do so in the hope that my experiences will throw some oblique light on the
enigma of Chris McCandless.
“AN EXTREMIST”
Read the following, which Chris McCandless wrote on a piece of
wood during his journey. Then, explain what it reveals about
McCandless:
TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH. NO PHONE, NO
POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM.
AN EXTREMIST. AN AESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME
IS THE ROAD. ESCAPED FROM ATLANTA. THOU SHALT
NOT RETURN, ‘CAUSE “THE WEST IS THE BEST.” AND NOW
AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND
GREATEST ADVENTURE. THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TO KILL
THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND VICTORIOUSLY
CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION. TEN DAYS AND
NIGHTS OF FREIGHT TRAINS AND HITCHHIKING BRING
HIM TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH. NO LONGER TO BE
POISONED BY CIVILIZATION HE FLEES, AND WALKS
ALONE UPON THE LAND TO BECOME LOST IN THE WILD.
ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP
MAY 1992
ADVENTURE
Read the following quotes from Chris McCandless. Then, discuss the
following questions with your group:
✓ What’s better: A life of adventure or a life of security?
✓ What’s better: A life of conforming to society or breaking the mold?
✓ What’s better: A life of experiences or a life of money/material things?
Finally, summarize your thoughts on the above questions.
“The very basic core of a
man’s living spirit is his passion
for adventure. The joy of life
comes from our encounters
with new experiences, and
hence there is no greater joy
than to have an endlessly
changing horizon, for each
day to have a new and
different sun.”
HAPPINESS
Read the following excerpt from the Author’s Note. Then, discuss and answer
the following questions:
a) How does McCandless’s version of happiness differ from the traditional American
dream? Explain.
b) How does YOUR version of happiness/your American dream compare to
McCandless’s? Explain.
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…He’d grown up, I learned, in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., where
he’d excelled academically and had been an elite athlete. Immediately after
graduating, with honors, from Emory University in the summer of 1990, McCandless
dropped out of sight. He changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-
four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his
possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet. And then he invented a new life for
himself, taking up residence at the ragged margin of our society, wandering across
North America in search of raw, transcendent experience. His family had no idea
where he was or what had become of him until his remains turned up in Alaska.
He was an extremely intense young man and possessed a streak of stubborn
idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence. Long captivated by the
writing of Leo Tolstoy, McCandless particularly admired how the great novelist had
forsaken a life of wealth and privilege to wander among the destitute…
