Into the Wild

Has anyone read this yet? Have you seen the movie? if both, in what order did you do it?

I heard about the movie being released and when i heard that there was a book about it already out, I beat the masses and borrowed the book from my local library. I fell in love with the story and couldn't wait for the movie to come out!

The basic storyline is that a young man graduates from college in the early 1990's. He decides that he doesn't want to do the "norm" anymore and leaves his apartment and heads west. He takes the $24,000 that he had saved up and donated it to a charity. He later ditches his car, burns all his money and all identification. He then hits the road in an adventure of meeting people and experiancing life in the wild. He then decides that he wants to head to Alaska and try to live In the Wild.

I will not go further into the storyline so I do not give away any major plots, but I recommend that you read the book AND then watch the movie. Makes the movie all that more special.

The author of the book is Jon Krakauer. He does a great job of capturing the adventures of Chris McCandless.

ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP!!

I saw the movie after the book- enjoyed the book much more. I didn't like the portrayal of his parents in the movie.Did you have the feeling in the book that he was mentally ill? I think the movie varies a lot from the book and all I can say is it can be a tear jerker!

I've read the book several times. I feel McCandless was a perfectly sane young man, idealistic & with romantic notions about the wilderness. He really didn't understand the risks he was taking. It's quite heartbreaking, but a powerful read.

Haven't seen the movie, & probably won't for a while. I don't tend to enjoy films that take artistic license with real stories. I'd rather watch a documentary.

I've read Krakauer's other books. He's best known for "Into Thin Air," a personal account of an expedition to Mount Everest during which several people died. It's also sad & powerful. He carries the readers to that place & time, & is uncommonly honest in sharing his own experiences.

I have not read the book nor seen the movie. I sometimes avoid books that I know will break my heart.."Wild" sounded like one of them. Partly it is because of having sons of my own, I think. The Glass Castle was another I tried to avoid, but it chased me until it caught me.

I read Into the Wild years ago, and remember thinking that I just wanted to shake him and yell at him the whole book through. Like so many idealistic young people, he didnt have a plan for what if things went awry, and like Phoenix said, he didn't understand the risks he was taking.

As to his mental state, it's just too hard to know. Looking back, he could have been just idealistic, or perhaps just not a good planner, or perhaps arrogant, or perhaps had some medical condition such as a mild form of autism, or any number of things. I've done a lot of stupid stuff that I now wish someone had shook me and yelled at me rather than let me do. But I was lucky and survived.

I read the book last year and recently saw the movie on DVD (bought it for $9 at Family Video). If he had some sort of mental imbalance then so do I I totally understood his point. I'm a little more cautious though, I never would have gone out without more provisions and letting someone know where I was.

I've also read The Glass Castle and Into Thin Air.

*edited because I can't type

thebigscott wrote:I read Into the Wild years ago, and remember thinking that I just wanted to shake him and yell at him the whole book through. Like so many idealistic young people, he didnt have a plan for what if things went awry, and like Phoenix said, he didn't understand the risks he was taking.

OMG, I love you. This is exactly how I felt reading the book. I could not put it down, and it angered me to the point of tears. I think McCandless was highly idealistic, and very unrealistic. He seemed to have a huge air of arrogance about him, and he romanticized a lot of things he shouldn't have. Furthermore, he was SO unprepared! How could he be well prepared for all of the other things in his life, but fail on the most important adventure?

UGH. And the movie was actually really good too. I'm not usually an Eddie Vedder fan, but the music was perfect for the film. The last few minutes were incredibly sad. I was wondering how they'd handle it.