Response #4

“One hundred twenty-three dollars in legal tender was promptly reduced to ash and smoke” (29 Krakauer).
Uploaded on January 3, 2006
by sybexs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbran/81698299/

This is a picture of a young person, i think its a guy i don’t know, sitting on the stree with a sign made of cardboard.  This tends to indicate a homeless person, or someone who has to ask for money in order to survive.  I chose this picture because it contradicts what happens in the story.  The caption I used for this photograph is in reference to Christopher McCandless burning his money.  The person depicted in this photo did not choose to be without a lot of money, and yet Chris makes the decision to keep very little money.  Also, if the person in this picture had $123 i doubt they would burn it, in fact they would probably resent the fact that McCandless did.  

“Just plain couldn’t stand to wear socks” (George Dreeszen 40).

Uploaded on April 15, 2006
by bruceley
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bruceley/129153029

This image shows a man in fast food place.  He is sitting down and only wearing shoes, but no socks.  While he was in Bullhead City, Arizona Chris worked at a McDonald’s flipping burgers.  One of their rules was that you had to wear proper attire which meant socks and shoes.  Dreeszen mentions how as soon as he was done with his shift the first thing Chris would do was take his socks off then put his shoes back on.  This picture combines two aspects of this event: the fast food restaurant, and the lack of socks. This is an example of just how stubborn McCandless could be, even if it seemed silly to other people. 

“- scarcely qualifies as wilderness by Alaska standards,” (165 Krakauer).

Uploaded on April 18, 2006
by sarahlefton
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahlefton/131116782/

This photo is of trees and snow, what would normally look like deserted woods.  However, in the left side of the photo you can barely see the edge of a cabin.  I actually didn’t notice it the first glance I had of this picture.  Christopher McCandless walked into the “wild” to live off the land and be completely alone.  Unfortuantely, he died doing this.  What he didn’t know was that just out the range of places he walked were cabins and campgrounds that a few hunters were staying out.  I chose this tag because as Krakauer says most people don’t even consider where he was the wilderness.  If McCandless had seen the bigger picture by either having a map or walking further he would have known that it only looked like the wilderness from where he was.  McCandless tried so hard to cut off everyone and be alone in the world, but when he needed the world to save him he didn’t even realize it was only a few miles away.

“I’m going to completely knock them out of my life.  I’m going to divorce them as my parents once and for all and never speak to either of those idiots again as long as I live. I’ll be through with them once and for all, forever,” (64 McCandless).

Uploaded on August 13, 2005
by techsavant
http://static.flickr.com/21/33773716_a5294d1e2c.jpg?v=0

This picture shows a very happy man giving a piggy back ride to his smiling son.  They are both wearing matching baseball shirts which leads me to believe they spend a lot of time together doing that.  McCandless and his father had a very heated relationship, but perhaps not until later.  Krakauer claims that Chris submitted to his father until college but all the while his rage was building.  I choose this quote that Chris wrote in a letter to his sister because its hard to imagine such intense anger and resentment between a father and a son while looking at the serene picture above.  I would not look at a picture like that and guess that one day that little boy would want to cut off all ties with his family. There were probably pictures of Chris and his father at some point though, looking just as happy. 

 

I think a photograph can influence the meaning of a caption, but usually it is the other way around.  In the pictures where the caption matches what is going on it is pretty straightforward sometimes the caption can be humorous, or just descriptive.  In the photos that are different from their captions it makes you look at it in a whole new light.  For instance the last picture I use has a positive picture with a very negative caption.  When you read that caption it makes you take another look at the photo and wonder “what are they really thinking?”  It raises the question, are the people in that photo really projecting how they feel or are they just smiling for the camera?  Captions are good because if they are really striking or noticable then it sometimes makes us take a longer look at a photo we might have just glanced over.  Also, perhaps you don’t notice something in a picture the first time you see such as the Cabin in my third example, but when you read the caption it makes you go back and take a closer look.  I think that some of these quotes that are out of context from Into The Wild make Christopher McCandless look bad.  If you were just to look at this assignment that I’ve done and use those four quotes and pictures to judge him as a person it would not be very good.  He comes across as selfish, a little offbeat, stupid, and possibly a bad son.  If you read the book though you can see that these things he did had meaning.  He may have made a simple mistake about knowing his surroundings, but he was not by any mean unintelligent.  Christopher burned that money but he also donated the rest of his college fund to OXFAM, and he burned it for what it symbolized.  Things like that are not explained when all you have is a quote ripped out of an interview, or a chapter that can change how you look at it.