Author: pinkystarr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/norwegianmale/130057593/

Caption: (A) “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!  (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 199).

 
Here is a photo of a fairly young looking male who is smiling for the camera as a picture is taken of him outdoors. This picture captures my attention because this man smile reminds me of how I perceive McCandless smiling as he takes the last picture of himself. This photo is shown to us on the second page of Jon Krakauer’s book where he is seated in a chair next to the bus. I chose this caption because many people keeps trying to figured out the purpose that was behind McCandless journey whether McCandless was content or not with life. Well this caption proves to tell everyone that yes, Chris was content with the choice that he made and he leaves this world as he writes, “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!  (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 199). Chris did not want people plundering over this and took upon himself to answer that he did indeed enjoyed himself while he was alive.

 
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Caption: (B) “S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE, I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. ” (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 197).

 
Above is an image illustrating a No Exit directional sign. I chose this image only to illustrate that McCandless journey to Alaska was one that he was not going to back out off. McCandless hiked and journey onto Alaska without once ever turning around to head in the direction of home which was Annandale. I chose this caption that Chris writes seeking help as he is seriously ill only to show the irony that this picture captures. Chris departed from home with the intention of living alone and among the wild without human contact and here he is now writing for help from people. This is an irony because throughout the text, Chris wrote about living solely of the wild, but near death, he realizes that the wild cannot save him and that his only hope of survival would be from a human contact. This is why he finally placed his ego aside and writes, “S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE, I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE. ” (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 197). This is ironical for Chris to ask for help because he originally went on this journey to get away from civilization and people but now he seeks their assistance.

 
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Caption: (C) “McCandless conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he’d died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print” (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 44).

 
This picture shows a man who is either dead or drunk, that has fallen off the couch, alone in his home, surrounded by trash and a laptop. I chose this image because of how upset Krakauer was at London for possibly being the cause of Chris’s death. The image that I had previously painted in my head of Jack London was not clear and this picture helps to clarify it. I now see why Krakauer was upset at London because as I look at this image and look at the caption that Krakauer uses to describe Jack London, even I get upset that he wrote such a book. The caption helps to reinstate the fact that London was useless and should be ashamed of himself for the death of this young man. I support Krakauer in showing Jack London as he really is rather than his fiction novels showed him to have been. Those false representation of London that Chris read from his novel, contributed to the cause of Chris’s death.

 
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Caption: (D) “One of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell” (Krakauer, Into The Wild, 199).

 
 
This image shows a male on the horizon of the beach as the sun is about to shine, who is filled with excitement, possibly over a soccer game victory. I chose this image to show the irony to that of Chris’s goal, which was to walk out of the wild alive and to prove to his family that he didn’t need them any more, he just needed to find himself. Unfortunately, his goal turns out to be death of starvation. I chose the caption because Chris is taking his very last picture to capture the goal he has reached in life. The irony is that Chris died because he did not fully prepared himself for this voyage and did not achieve his goal of walking out of the wild, in this picture, it is evident that this man was able to achieve his goal because he has his hands stretched out with excitement. Chris’s original goal before he encountered death, was to stay in Alaska for 100 days and then walk out alive, however, his mission proved to be fatal and Chris was unable to achieve that goal.

 
 
Synthesis:
All four of these images and the many others that I browsed through influenced the way I had read Into the wild. Like the No Exit sign, it makes me think whether or not Chris McCandless knew all along that he would end up dead during his journey. I start to wander; maybe this is why he wanted all his mails returned back to the senders. The ecstatic male image with the Goal headline, constantly reminded me of how happy Chris looked as he spoke about his voyage to those he encountered on the way, especially to the older man that he happened to persuade to go and also live among the wild. Both the captions and the pictures help us to focus more in depth on a particular passage. The quotes makes us to really concentrate on one idea or thought and try to understand what Chris or those that encountered him really meant by what they said. The pictures and quotes help us to draw our attention solely onto Chris and actually try to figure out what was really going on in his head. These four images helped but the other images that I browsed through, made me want to find a quote for each image and do this for the entire book. Maybe a visual layout of what Chris was actually thinking would help me decide whether he was a hero as many saw him as or an idiot as others view him as also.

 
 
 

Chris McCandless or Alex Super tramp, whichever one he prefers, is an individual who has made changes in the lives of others around him but has overlooked his parents. As I am reading this book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, I can’t help but think how ironic it is that Chris gets along with people he encounters on his journey and yet he cannot stand his parents. I feel that Chris is not a hero but rather is running away from his parents. If this entire mission was solely to appreciate nature, Chris would not continuous mention to people he encounters and complains to them about how his parents take him for granted. Chris’s adventure is only done to defy his parents and to prove to them that he does not need them buying him a new car, or paying for his law school education. Rather than just telling them this as a man, Chris decides to live on his own in the wild, and was hoping to come out alive to prove to his parents that he didn’t need them that he knew what he wanted to do in life. The approach in which Chris went about this is totally incorrect; for an educated person, he did not educate himself about the outdoors, or check out the credentials of the authors of those outdoor adventure books. A person with such a high grade point took a fictional and used it to survived in a real life. This once again proves my point that Chris was in such a rush to defy his parents that he did not research about this journey thoroughly before he departed.

I read the short story the dead by James Joyce and also saw the musical of it performed at George Mason University. There were many small additions that the director chose to include in their version of the dead. And a striking difference is that Miss. Ivory stayed through dinner rather than leaving before dinner as seen in James Joyce the dead short story text version. It was also interesting to see how the director chose to have Aunt Julia die as opposed to the text version. With the musical portraying the death of Aunt Julie, it makes it seem that both Gabrielle and Gretta bears a lost of losing a love one.

 Here is Gretta who suffers the lost of a childhood friend who dies for her sake in the short story and musical and here’s Aunt Julia who dies of old age and joy from Gabrielle’s speech. With both of these deaths, there is a sense of equilibrium. While reading the text version, one recalls that Gabrielle states that he does not know how to love someone that much to cause that person to die for his sake.

I could not help but feel sympathy towards Gabrielle. Here is a faithful husband who desires nothing more than to make love to his wife in the concluding scene and is faced with a dreadful truth that his wife’s heart belongs to a childhood lover. It is not surprising that Gabrielle’s mother opposed his marriage to Gretta, because she felt “Gretta as being country cute and that was not true of Gretta at all.”(Joyce, the dead, 30) I believe that it is true, mothers do know best. Gabrielle’s mother could sense before her tragic death of an illness that Gretta heart does not truly belong to her son Gabrielle.