Into the Wild | "The Dark Continent" of Ambiguity in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild
Deborah Moreland received her doctorate in Literary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, having written her dissertation on the connection between high culture and low culture in early twentieth-century British literature. She now teaches and chairs the English department at a private school in Dallas. In the following essay on Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Dr. Moreland examines narrative strategies that support or subvert Krakauer’s claim that he “leaves it to the reader to form his or her opinion” on Chris McCandless.
“I was haunted,” says Jon Krakauer in explaining why he wrote about Chris McCandless, whose journey away from the conventions and materialism of contemporary American culture and into the wilderness of Alaska ended with loneliness and starvation. What haunts the author is not only the facts of the story as he traces them but also the “unsettling parallels between events” in McCandless’s story and his own. Unabashedly, the author uses his own experience to gain insight into that of his real-life character, immediately telling his reader in his opening note that he does so “in...
[The entire page is 2332 words long]
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