Rhetoric In Into The Wild

McKenna Vargas Mr. Cagley ERWC-Period 3 08 December 2015 Module 4: Life on the Road In the biographical book, Into the Wild the author, Jon Krakauer, reveals the journey of the late Chris McCandless. McCandless chose to leave his privileged life for a much more rugged life in the Denali Borough of Alaska. McCandless’s ill-preparedness led to his journey’s end after only 113 days resulting in death. McCandless’s story begs the question, Is life on the road suited for everyone?

In August of 1992, a man by the name of Chris McCandless was found dead in a bus located north of Mt. McKinley Alaska, by a group of hunters. The book, Into the wild, is written by Jon Krakauer who takes on the task of finding out who exactly was Chris McCandless. Through the book, we find out about his childhood, his school life and his travels. The book gives us a sense of who he was a person, his childhood life, and his thoughts on the world. Many argue that his death was a suicide but one can argue that his death was exactly the opposite.

.In “Why I Went to the Woods”, Henry David Thoreau uses rhetorical questions to reveal that Americans are senseless and unaware with how they spend their time. Thoreau mentioned, “Who will build railroads?” and “How shall we get to heaven in season?” if the railroads were not built.

He understood that Chris was a well educated and arrogant man, leading him to be full of himself, while ill equipped. Gallien described “[his] gear [as] exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior” (Krakauer, 1997, p. 6), and rather than listen to the advice of others, Chris moved forward with his plans. He clutched onto the knowledge he gathered from the society he ran from, in a weak attempt to find individuality, which resulted in his death by starvation and late realization that “happiness [is] only real when shared” (Krakauer, 1997, p. 129). It’d be easy for someone to accept starvation as a cause of death in such a scenario, but Jon saw beyond that, allowing the reader to analyze Jon ’s own analysis of the journaling that Chris did.

A trait simply described as the overestimation of oneself can be a quintessential element in understanding a character’s downfall. People such as Chris McCandless, Oedipus and Tiger Woods are key examples when trying to relate, understand, and analyze what we know today as “Hubris”. The connections that can be made between each of these characters describe the very nature of how a hero will ultimately meet their bane as a result of being blinded by their own flaws. The death of Chris McCandless was an extremely controversial subject that involved many different people. The justification of his death can be argued in a way .

Chris McCandless was a very caring person, and cared about

“ rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”(117). Chris couldn’t live with the anger he had towards his father and on top of that feeling like a hypocrite when he would talk to him. McCandless wasn’t interested in having materialistic things he wanted to separate from society and their beliefs and do what he wanted to do. All of these circumstances swayed him to searched the wild to find what it was really like. Chris was not crazy, he died tragically to simply try to find order to his imperfect life he was a serious

Hand in Hand “I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.” (Leo Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness”). Jon Krakauer's story influences the way we perceive Chris.

Rhetorical Analysis of Remember the Titans In the movie Remember the Titans, Coach Boone states, that his players need to be unified together as a team, instead of being separated because of the color of their skin. He does this by using allusion, diction, and a rhetorical question. Boone uses a rhetorical question in line one when he states, “Anybody know what this place is?”

Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild investigates the life and adventures of Chris McCandless. The author provides information about Chris’ life to illuminate his journey. Krakauer also uses rhetorical appeals to defend Chris’ rationale for his journey. Through Krakauer’s use of pathos, ethos, and logos, he persuades the audience that Chris is not foolish; however, Krakauer’s intimacy with Chris and his adventures inhibits his objectivity.

"I think that Chris McCandless was bright and ignorant at the same time. He had no common sense, and he had no business going to Alaska with his Romantic silliness. He made a lot of mistakes based on ignorance. I don’t admire him at all for his courage nor his noble ideas. Really, I think he was just plain crazy."

Transcendentalist Paper Charlie Jones once stated “Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be.” Chris McCandless was a very unique person. McCandless never really let anything get him down. He did what he wanted to do and never let anyone push him around.

People believed that he ate potato seeds that were possibly poisonous (Hedysarum Alpinum) due to it being a resource around and he was starving. Chris wouldn’t have known they were poisonous but he most likely wouldn’t have eaten them if he would have accepting money, food, or have been better prepared. They think the seeds cause his stomach to weaken then eventually his body weakened, at one point he was too weak to leave the bus to try to go find food. If Chris would have saved some of the $24,000 or kept his map he would have had a better chance of

Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the novel and film Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, is not your average guy. Driven by his minimalist ideals and hate for society, he challenged the status quo and embarked on a journey that eventually lead to his unforeseen demise. A tragic hero, defined by esteemed writer, Arthur Miller, is a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on tragedy. Christopher McCandless fulfills the role of Miller’s tragic hero due to the fact that his tragic flaw of minimalism and aversion towards society had lead him to his death.

By changing his identity and leaving society, he felt he was shedding the fake elements of his past and evolving into a person he wanted to be. Chris McCandless did not depart on his transcendental quest to die, he ventured into the wilderness to kill the disappointments of his