David Abram, "The Ecology of Magic" and:

• Jon Krakauer, Selections from Into the Wild

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Abram link-o-mat.

Abram and Krakauer: Shamanism and the Excursion into the Wild

In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer attempts "to make sense of [Chris] McCandless's life and death, yet his essence remains slippery, vague, elusive" (439). For this paper, I want you to discuss how Abram's notion of the shaman helps to make sense of McCandless's story.

You may want to consider some of the following questions. As always, this is not a checklist of things to include in your paper, but rather a list of possible jumping-off points to help you get started towards a thesis of your own.

1. Did McCandless see himself as a shaman-like figure? Does Krakauer? Do you?

2. Does it make sense to see Krakauer himself, rather than McCandless, as a shaman?

3. How would Abram regard McCandless's actions?

4. Would Krakauer be as impressed with Abram's adventures as he is with McCandless's?

5. Does anything in Abram's essay help to account for the harshness of McCandless's critics?

6. Does McCandless's fate prove anything about the problems with the Western attitude to nature that Abram describes?

Craig Eliason, Rutgers University, Fall 2000

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