Post 6

Another entry for Into the Wild; this time I would like to talk all about the vagabonds Krakauer compares to McCandless. All of these nature and solitude seekers are extremely interesting characters, but the character Everett Ruess caught my attention the most. He was eerily similar to McCandless. At the opening of the chapter there is an excerpt from the last letter written by Ruess, and as I was reading that excerpt I honestly thought that I was reading a letter written by McCandless. The letter was written in a manner that McCandless has written before in his previously shown letters. The way they both wish to remain distanced from civilization. Their yearning for a close relationship with nature and all of its beauty is uncannily similar. It almost seems like McCandless was trying to be Ruess, but of a more recent generation and in a different region of the country. I found it weird how Ruess’s beasts of burden were found; just contentedly eating the grass in their makeshift field. I just thought it was a bit random. One major difference I do find between the two radicals is their relationships with their parents. Krakauer does not give any evidence of any bitterness between Ruess and his parents. I can sympathize with McCandless’s want to escape civilization from mean people, but Ruess’s expedition into nature all alone seems completely sporadic, not really having any origin. How influential can Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea be that a young man would journey into the wilderness without intelligent companionship and, eventually, meet his end? I thought that novel was an innocent classic, but apparently not.