Halfway Through Into The Wild

1.  He was from a well-to-do East Coast family and graduated from Emory University with honors in 1990.  He was an elite athlete. After graduating, he decided to leave everything, change his name, and give his money away to charity. He went on a journey to hitchhike in Alaska (Author’s Note 1). No one knew of his plans (6).

2.  Chris had an attraction to dangerous things and liked exploring new things. Another theme is the complicated relationships between parents and their children. Also, one of themes introduced in the Author’s Note is people having divergent point of views of Chris McCandless. Some think he was an idiot and narcissist, and others admire his courage (Author’s Note 3).

3.  The quoted material at the start of Chapter One is about McCandless on his journey, and it is his goodbye to Wayne Westerberg. It was his last conversation with someone he knew before he went into the wild. It proves that he knew what he was doing (3).

4.  Alex is Chris McCandless’s alias (3).

5.  Jim Gallien is the man that drove McCandless to the Stampede Trail (6). Gallien met McCandless when he picked up McCandless hitchhiking (3).

6.  Gallien’s assessment was to take him to drive him to Anchorage, buy him gear, and then drive him wherever he wanted (6). Gallien was experienced with nature, and he gave McCandless advice.

7. Gallien told him to wear the boots to keep his feet warm and dry (7).

8.  Also, what gift did Gallien give to McCandless? When Gallien offered to drive McCandless to Anchorage and buy him gear, McCandless said, “No, thanks anyway. I’ll be fine with what I’ve got.” Gallien gave McCandless lunch and a pair of boots (6,7).

9.  He thought that McCandless would get hungry and walk out to the highway (7).

10.  The opposite of what he said is what happened. McCandless is not normal. He is different.

11.  An excerpt from one of Jack London’s novels was carved into a piece of wood at the site of McCandless’s death (9). McCandless could relate to what the quote said, and it seems like nature is the thing that killed him.

12.  The detailed descriptions of Mt. McKinley, Denali, and the Stampede Trail explain the geography of where McCandless was and the history of the Stampede Trail and abandoned bus (9-11).

13. The cause of McCandless’s death was considered to be starvation (14).

14. Westerberg picked Chris up while Chris was hitchhiking. Wayne takes Chris under his wing (16). He let Chris stay with him and work for him (17).

15. They describe travellers and road culture. Rubber tramps are travellers that own a vehicle, and leather tramps are travellers that walk and hitchhike (17).

16.  He hung out with them all the time and lived with them. They accepted him for who he was. At the Carthage home, they cooked for each other, went drinking together, and chased women together (18).

17.  Westerberg was in trouble with the law, and there was no work at the grain elevator for McCandless to do.  McCandless left earlier than he thought he would have (19).

18.  Chris has a connection to the character Pierre, and he tells Wayne to “listen to Pierre” (19).

19.  He was raised in Virginia. His dad worked for NASA and then made his own business with Chris’s mom. There were eight children in their family. Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta (19, 20).

20.  He did not talk to his family after he sent them his grades, and he did not accept money or a car from his parents (22).

21.  He changed his name to Alexander Supertramp (23).

22.  Chris wanted to leave everything and go on a journey. His journey was his reality.

23.  She is a rubber tramp who sold knick-knacks at flea markets with her boyfriend. She saw Chris on the side of the road and offered him a ride. Chris sent her and her boyfriend postcards every month or two (30-31).

24.  Chris paddled the canoe down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California (32). He paddled through restricted military ground and sneaked into Mexico (33-34). Chris had gotten lost in the maze of channels in Mexico (34). Mexican duck hunters agreed to tow Chris and his canoe to the ocean (35). They took him to the Gulf of California where he continued to travel south (35).

25.  It is written in third person (29).

26 Chris is thankful for still being alive (37). We should live our lives to the fullest extent.

27.  Chris lived a good life in Bullhead City. He really liked it there. He got a job at McDonald’s and was going to open a savings account at a bank (39). When he applied for the job, he used his real name, instead of Alex (40).

28. The residents of the Slab were snowbirds, drifters, and sundry vagabonds. Slab consisted of the teeming itinerant society. There were a lot of poor people there. There was a girl that had a crush on McCandless (43-44).

29.  He was a socializer, had musical talents, was a hard worker, and liked to read (43-45).

30.  Jan thought that he would figure everything out because he had done many other difficult things. She offered him clothes and knives (46).

31.  Ron Franz was an eighty year old man that drove McCandless from Salton City, California to Grand Junction Co. He wrote a letter to the offices of Outside magazine wanting to understand what happened to McCandless (48). Franz was a grandfatherly figure for McCandless (51).

32.  Anza-Borrego is a desert state park (48).

33.  While he was overseas for the army, his wife and only child were killed by a drunk driver in a car accident. He started drinking a lot after that happened (50).

34.  Franz liked Chris a lot. He felt like a father again (50). He requested to take him to San Diego (52). He asked Chris if he would be his adopted grandson (55).

35.  It was a way of communicating skill and creativity (52).

36.  Chris was thrilled to be on his way north (55).

37.  Chris told him to change “his habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living” (57). Franz listened to Chris and lived in the bajada (58). After a flash flood, he had to move twenty miles out and camped there (59).

38.  He picked up two hitchhikers, and one of them told him that he saw an article about his friend in the Outdoor magazine. When Chris left, Franz prayed that he would be okay. When he found out he died, Franz lost his belief in God and started drinking again. He had gotten really sick (60).

39.  The combine had broken down for the third time, and he was trying to replace a hard-to-reach bushing before nightfall. He was counting on Chris to be back at work by then (62).

40.  How did Chris feel about his sister Carine? They were both stubborn and high strung (64). Chris was pretty close to Carine (63).

41.  Rossellini is similar to McCandless. He tried to live like he was a Stone Age native, but he killed himself (75). His full story includes all of the things they have in common. They were both seekers and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature (85).

42.  According to Krakauer, “parallels have been drawn between John Waterman and Chris McCandless.” (80). They were both fascinated by nature, but McCandless was not mentally ill (85).

43.  McCunn is similar to McCandless, too. McCandless was not the only person interested in hiking in Alaska (84).

44.  Everett Ruess was born in California and was the younger of two sons. His family moved around a lot when he was a kid. When he was sixteen, he spent his summer hitchhiking in Yosemite and Big Sur until he ended up in Carmel. Then, he returned home to graduate from high school.  He explored through the American West and wrote letters about the terrific experiences he had in each place he visited. He changed his name to a different alias often. He had a “craving for connection to a natural world” (89-93).

45.  Sleight said that they both like companionship, but do not like being around people for a long time. Ruess and McCandless both tried to follow their dreams (96).