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.