Jámon

Justus Becker
Into the Wild Project
Hour 8

Into the Wild : Book or Movie?

Into the Wild, one of not many books about which most of the people that I have talked to were of

the opinionthat the movie is better than the book. But is that the truth? Is the movie really better

than the book? I don’t think it is an easy decision because the book as well as the movie have

theiradvantages.

Let’s start with the book. Jon Krakauer did an excellent job writing it, it has a lot of background

information and Krakauer does quite an amazing job on analyzing McCandlesspersonality. He

also keeps a very good balance between praising and criticizing Alex, which brings over the

impression that he is keeping a neutral position. He focuses on the facts, where otherpeople

just rip McCandless for being unprepared and accuse him of being stupid and naive for just

wandering into the wild without giving him any credit for surviving 2 years on the road,hitchhiking over America. The fact that he kayaked the Colorado River, which is widely known

one of the most difficult rivers to kayak on, all the way down to the Gulf of California. These

thingsprove that McCandless was definitely capable of surviving his odyssey. But there are

also disadvantages to the book. Krakauer gives too many irrelevant facts about other people

who attemptedadventures like McCandless did. Now, I have to admit, that I thought that that

was unnecessary. I wanted to learn about Chris and not about people who did things that he did.

The book should havemostly been about McCandless, but it was not. That disappointed me.

Still, Into the Wild was one of the most influential books I have ever read and though it was rather

boring at times, itstill made the list of my favorite books.

Now to the movie. First of all I have to admit that Into the Wild is not only one of my favorite

books but also one of my favorite movies. I bought it...