Here’s the craft essay about Into the Wild, it ties in with the previous post Krakauer vs Gilbert.
Framing Jon Krakauer
In the visiting writer workshop on Friday, Lee Gutkind described how the basic building blocks of creative nonfiction are scenes and stories. An author uses a frame, or a larger story, to keep the reader turning pages, but stretches each scene out so that the substance (the “aboutness”) is cleverly woven through the narrative. In other words, the frame keeps the reader reading because it keeps him or her wanting to find out what happens next.
After the workshop, I was curious to see how Krakauer does this in Into the Wild, especially since most people already know the ending of Chris McCandless’ story. But just in case some readers missed the author’s 1993 Outside article about Chris, or didn’t see the movie, or never heard about the controversy surrounding the events of finding his body, Krakauer gives away the ending in the first paragraph of the opening Author’s Note: “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.” So, why did I keep turning the pages of Into the Wild if I already knew the story’s gruesome ending?
In the first chapter, the action starts immediately when Jim Gallien picks up a young hitchhiker who calls himself Alex. Through scenes containing snippets of conversation I learn that Alex is heading into the bush of Denali National Park for a few months, but doesn’t seem adequately prepared for such a trip. At the end of this chapter, I keep reading because I want to know how the hitchhiker—who I’m fairly sure, is Chris—survived as long as he did.
The next chapter describes the Stampede trail and how McCandless’ body was found. It weighed sixty-seven pounds and the authorities listed starvation as the most probable cause of death. Krakauer cleverly ends this chapter without answering the questions raised in the previous chapter; instead he adds more of them: “But because he had been carrying no identification, the authorities didn’t know who he was, where he was from, or why he was there.”(14)
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The third chapter skips back in time and leads me to Wayne Westerberg, a man whom “Alex” worked for and got very close to. I also learn a little bit more about Chris’ college years, briefly meet his family and find out that he breaks all contact with them before heading out on the big trip. Krakauer teases me with some details that begin to answer the questions raised in the previous chapter, but the more information I learn, the more questions I have. I know who the hitchhiker was in name only, I don’t know very much about his character or why he broke with his family. I know where he was from, but still don’t know why he decided to go to Alaska. I turn some more pages to see if I can find out more.
As I keep reading, the picture of Christopher McCandless becomes clearer, but Krakauer weaves his narrative slowly and stretches out each chapter so that with more information comes more questions. He traces Chris’ physical travels from Atlanta to Alaska in detailed descriptions of landscapes. We learn about McCandless emotional journey through journal entries, letters and notes, and conversations he had with people that Krakauer has interviewed. Slowly, the narrative begins to answer my questions of why this boy broke with his family, why he wanted to go to Alaska, and ultimately why he didn’t survive.
Then, about one third into the book, starting with the chapter called “Alaska,” Krakauer expands the question “why did Christopher McCandless want to escape into the wild?” into “why do people want to escape conventional society and live in isolation in the wild?” by telling the stories of Gene Rosellini, John Waterman, Carl McCunn, and Everett Russ. The frame of the book becomes much larger, but so does the “aboutness.” To show me his authority on this topic, Krakauer tells his own story in the chapters called “The Stikine Ice Cap.” At this point I have a fairly clear picture of Chris McCandless personality, so when the author tells me that “As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody. I disappointed my father in the usual ways.”(134) it becomes clear why he’s so obsessed with McCandless story. So although I consciously hadn’t asked that question, I realize that as Krakauer wrote this story, he found out something about himself, which immediately alerts my reading-as-a-writer radar.
As Amanda Miller pointed out in her essay on this book, Krakauer is very deliberate in his explanations and makes sure that his conclusions are clear to the readers. From the beginning of the book, he is present on the page: “We know all of this because McCandless documented the burning of his money…” (29) and “On January 4, 1993, this writer received an unusual letter…” It is also obvious that the author cares for the subject of his book and wants to set the record straight: “The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn’t among them.” (178)
In the last two chapters and the epilogue, the story changes from being about Chris McCandles and people like him to be focused mostly on John Krakauer. He describes visiting the bus for the first time and what that felt like; the extensive research involved in figuring out what really killed Chris McCandles; and then what it was like visiting the bus again with Mr. and Mrs. McCandless. At times the strong presence of Krakauer irritated me, but it also kept me reading. I had a hard time relating to Chris McCandless. Although I’m an avid backpacker and love the outdoors, I have never been a young American male, filled with angst, estranged from my family. By clearly spelling out why other people may relate to McCandless and why I should care about him, Krakauer kept me engaged. And then of course there were all those questions I wanted answered which the author eventually did, but only after leading me through all of the book’s 203 pages, using a captivating narrative constructed by scenes and stories.