By late February, McCandless informs Burres and Franz that he has jumped trains to Seattle.
Later, McCandless writes letters to him saying that work is hard to come by in San Diego. Eventually, Franz takes McCandless to San Diego where he attempts to get work. The old man teaches McCandless leatherwork skill and McCandless makes a monogrammed belt with symbols from his life as a tramp. McCandless lectures Franz about his sedentary lifestyle. Franz tries to persuade McCandless to take up a job but McCandless says that he has a plan. Franz buys McCandless food and shows keen interest in his stories and theories about life and society. Franz lost his wife and child while he was overseas, so he treats McCandless as his own son. McCandless shows Franz the hot springs where he camps in exchange for a ride and soon the two become friends. Franz visits Krakauer and tells him that he and McCandless met while camping at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near the Salton Sea. Franz, a recovered alcoholic and Vietnam veteran, who seeks a copy of a 1993 magazine article about Christopher McCandless’s death. And although Supertramp is the name of a British rock band from the 1970s, the reference more likely signals McCandless’s aspiration to be a super tramp - a great wanderer.įinally, McCandless may have been aware of a long line of characters from American literature who reject society and its values by “lighting out for the territories” - heading, that is, “into the wild.” These include Mark Twain’s creation Huckleberry Finn, Ishmael from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Ernest Hemingway’s character Nick Adams, and many others.The narrator and author of Into the Wild gets a letter from Ronald A.
McCandless may have chosen “Alexander” to honor Alexander the Great, a conqueror of vast territories previously unknown to him. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby), born and raised James Gatz before transforming himself into a glamorous millionaire. It also places him within a tradition of American characters who, as part of the process of reinventing themselves, change their names. Note that McCandless has chosen to call himself Alex, short for “Alexander Supertramp.” The adoption of this alias represents McCandless’s rejection of the parents who named him and his parents’ values. The epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey both start similarly, employing a technique the ancients called beginning in medias res - “in the middle of things.” Though Into the Wild is a nonfiction book (that is, a true story), Jon Krakauer’s choice to start it in this fashion encourages the reader to connect Christopher McCandless’s journey with that of the fictional character Odysseus (as well as other characters, like Aeneas and the protagonist of Dante’s Divine Comedy, who resemble Odysseus) - and to consider that McCandless himself may be a kind of hero. Into the Wild begins not with the birth of its main character, or even with the beginning of the journey that the book will trace, but with an important turning point late in Christopher McCandless’s trip through the American West: his final encounter with another human before he enters the Alaskan wilderness. On Tuesday, April 28, 1992, “Alex” (McCandless) disappears down the Stampede Trail. Gallien tries to talk him out of this, but the young man is undeterred, claiming there isn’t anything that he can’t deal with on his own. McCandless plans on following the Stampede Trail, an often unmarked route in the wilderness north of Mount McKinley.
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