Into the Wild

"It shall not be denied...that being footloose has always exhilarated us.  It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road always leads west."-Wallace Stegner, The American West as a Living Space

Grade Level: High School

Objective: To examine Chris McCandless, a modern day American wanderer, in the context of the texts we've read this semester.

Today we:

-Read Death of an Innocent: In 1990 Chris McCandless left his well-off East Coast family, gave his college fund to Oxfam, and took to the road - young, idealistic, invincible. Last year, equipped with little more than Tolstoy and a rifle, he hitched into Alaska. There, the wilderness turned against him

-Discussed Krakauer's depiction of McCandless and our first reactions to Chris's story

-Listened to an interview with Sean Penn on PRI's Studio 360 about the making of the film Into the Wild

-Read the end of Krakauer's article out loud, watched the final scene of the film and discussed stylistic similarities and differences