Monday, April 6, 2009

Finished Into The Wild. Don't Know Where I Stand..?

I recently just finished Into The Wild on Monday and I still cannot figure out where I stand on how I feel about the book. In all honesty, this is the first time a book has ever been able to do this to me. Throughout reading the book, I had mixed feelings while reading through the chapters. I feel as though in the beginning of the book I couldn't put it down. I really liked how it took off and how my attention was caught right away. Then towards the middle of the book, it was to the point where if I was reading it at night time and was enjoying it, I could put it down because my interest level in it was decreasing. What I really liked about the book was the different points of views there were from the several different people McCandless came across while in his travels. As the book started nearing to the end, it was getting plain boring and some of the content was becoming almost ridiculous with the whole Krakauer talking about his own climbing stories and such. Besides that, the more I learned about Chris McCandless, the more I was convinced he was not crazy. Through the first couple of chapters of the book, I have to say I was thinking that McCandless was some crazy, adventure-hungry man who just wanted to show-off how tough he was by going out into the world and hitchhiking/traveling from place to place. Now I realize that he was not CRAZY...but I am stuck on as to what I truly think of Chris McCandless. I think it is amazing that he made it as far as he did and lived as long as he lived the way he was going about. He did something that no one would do. He literally ditched society and created a life of his own. The life he wanted to live. He saw himself living in the presence of nature and a life free from the rules and regulations of society. Unfortunately, he didn't live to be able to tell his own stories of his travels from his point of view. Have you ever heard that one question people ask, if you could chose a person who has died to sit down and eat dinner with and talk to and ask questions, who would it be? Well my person would be Chris McCandless. Then I could truly know where I stand on how I think he is.

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