Speech and Dialogue

Regarding the speech and dialog in Into the Wild, Jon uses various ways to report to other people and how he put his or other people’s ideas into the text. He sometimes uses direct speech, which I will focus on here, to reduce his presence or influence on the text. For example, (the Indian youth interrupted:”Was his name Alex MacCandless?”) As you see he gives you the opportunity to live inside the character and see yourself what they have said exactly. To make it clearer, if you read some descriptive or argued essays, you will notice that direct speech is rarely used, but why?! The reason is obvious, there are seldom any characters to speak it. On the other hand, when you read stories that involve many characters, writing conversations between them is s key tool to make the story more logic and cohesive. And this is what Jon does in his book, he uses direct speech to create more comprehensive dialogues between the characters, to make you understand the personality of each person and how each person speak differently, which can provide the reader with more excitement and action when there are strong arguments between characters.

Setting of Into The Wild

As you can see, Into the Wild setting is primarily about the wilderness, specifically the western parts of America and Alaska. Most of the important events took place during the 1980s and 1990s. Also, Jon managed to support that type of setting by providing vivid descriptions about the parts of country that MacCandless crossed. Traveling back and forth through time is other feature for this story, For example, in chapters 1, 2 and 3, Jon narrates in different periods of times, once descriping MacCandless’s life and how he abandoned everything to leave to the Alaskan wilderness, and once more to talk about the Alaskan Terrain and the history of that place where Alex lived his last minutes there. However, when I was reading the book, I realized something. As a setting, the conflict between wilderness and civilization has a big presence in this story. In several occasions, when Jon goes back and fourth through time, he once describes the nature of the Alaskan terrain and other about the town MacCandless lived in. Nevertheless, the wilderness wins this conflict by having a greater influence in jon’s writing and descriptions, which makes us think that this wilderness was the home of Alex and as if he lived all his life there.

Themes

A theme of a novel is its main ideas. For instsance, Into the Wild has two or three possible themes, but I will choose what MacCandless wanted in the first place which is the ultimate freedom. During my reading throughout this book, I figured out that freedom is what all this story about. I mean it is the reason he left and abandoned everything, he wanted to feel that ultimate freedom. So, he chose the Alaska to live completely alone where are no rules except the nature’s rules! However, I believe this theme, which is freedom, is a recurring theme in many travel books, most of the travelers who set out on a journey, seek that ultimate freedom, but does that freedom require that level of isolation?! Can not you feel it while living within your society?! Well, I believe that most travelers or book writers who chose freedom as their main theme or goal, feel like they have some obligations towards other people when living amongst them, so they leave and abandon everything to get rod of all these obligaions. And that is what MacCandless did, he could not bear the tensions living in this modern part of the world, so he decided to go to the Alaskan wilderness as an endeavour to find that freedom.

Symbols in The Story

In the story there are some symbols that can tell you about a lot of hidden things in the story. These symbols more like a specific details that support an important image. These symbols make it easier for the reader to see the picture and easier to feel it which make the story more real and more enjoyable. For example, the part when Alex went to work in MacDonald’s after he left the job and when his colleges were asked about him, one of the colleges used to not like him and when she was asked about him she said that he was dirty and he always smells, so this word can be used as a symbol. This symbol shows us that he was homeless and he was living outdoor, so he cannot take a bath. Now after we read this symbol, we can feel the story easier because it has supported the image.

My Own Response

The power of the language in this book can change our minds and thoughts about a lot of things. when I first read this story and I read about Alex and his crazy decision, I thought that he is out of his mind because I have ever heard about anyone how had done this before, especially in my culture. The idea is that people do everything to study at universities and to get a good job in the future whereas Alex decided to leave all these things behind and start from zero. However after I read the story and the things that happened to him and the people who he had met; I changed my mind to a strong agreement with his decision. By this trip that he made he can learn a lot of things from the real life, I know it's a little bit dangerous ,but at the end it's a good experience for the whole life.

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN

In the previous tow posts, we were talking about Jon Krakauer and about some amazing pieces of his work. We have read a little bit about his life and we talked about one of his best seller books which was Into Thin Air which has a real story which is build on his own experience. i think it is a good time to talk about another nice popular book by this creative writer.

In 2003, another amazing book was written by Jon Krakauer became Krakauer's third non-fiction bestseller book. Under The Banner of Heaven is much different from what we used to read from this writer. Jon Krakauer usually writes about road trips wild trips; however in this book he wrote something different. This time he wrote about something more riligous, In Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, this time his talking about strong believes. I think this book much different from the previous books however, as long as the book is written by Jon Krakauer, it will be a good ,so if you are one of the people who does not like trips stories and you do love Jon karkauer you should try this book.

while i was searching about Jon Krakauer ,i found amazing and exciting information about him and a good review about his book Into Thin Air which conceder as one of best selling books , so in this post i really would like to shire this information with you .

" The author of the bestselling INTO THE WILD (1996) and an acclaimed journalist, Jon Krakauer was assigned by OUTSIDE magazine to write an article concerning how commercialized the climbing of Mount Everest had become. Some climbers have paid as much as $65,000 to join a guided group that would lead them to the summit. Krakauer makes the point that high-altitude climbing is dangerous even for the most veteran of climbers let alone for any novice group member. The author bluntly states that some of the novices were not qualified to climb Mount Everest. Because of this situation, Krakauer witnessed experienced guides taking on more responsibility than usually would be necessary. Krakauer’s group was led by the veteran New Zealand climber Rob Hall. Climbing at high altitude is a painful experience. Individuals can be hit with agonizing headaches, loss of strength, and loss of brain cells. Losing brain cells will make it impossible for a climber to think clearly.

Krakauer describes what it means to reach the summit. Unfortunately, a terrible blizzard struck Mount Everest within minutes of his reaching the top. For all of the climbers on the mountain, the blizzard turned what hopefully was to be a successful climb for all concerned into a nightmare. Because of poor planning, several of the climbers found themselves in a desperate situation that they had no way of protecting themselves against. Guides were forced to attempt rescues that were extremely dangerous. As described by Krakauer, the physical torment experienced by the climbers makes for both exhilarating and painful reading. In the end, several climbers lost their lives on Mount Everest, including two of the experienced guides. In addition to the personal story, Krakauer also makes the point to add historical facts about the climbing of Mount Everest. While he has attempted to be fair to all concerned, there have been participants who have taken issue with Krakauer’s pronouncements. INTO THIN AIR was intended merely to be an article for OUTSIDE magazine, but Krakauer felt it necessary to expand the 17,000-word article into a full-length book. It took great courage for him to complete this brilliant memoir. Rightfully, INTO THIN AIR became a bestseller."