Jon Krakauer, Selections from Into the Wild and:
For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please
visit the Krakauer
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." 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.
- Did McCandless see himself as a shaman-like figure? Does Krakauer?
Do you?
- Does it make sense to see Krakauer himself, rather than McCandless,
as a shaman?
- How would Abram regard McCandless's actions?
- Would Krakauer be as impressed with Abram's adventures as he is with
McCandless's?
- Does anything in Abram's essay help to account for the harshness of
McCandless's critics?
- Does McCandless's fate prove anything about the problems with the
Western attitude to nature that Abram describes?
Work with the readings from Abram and Krakauer only--we're done with
Pollan and Heim (for the time being)!
Craig Eliason, Rutgers University, Fall 2000
Back to top
Krakauer and Dillard: The Significance of Death
Jon Krakauer tells us that Chris McCandless died in the Alaskan wilderness.
What is the significance of that death? After all, as Annie Dillard quotes
murderer Ted Bundy, "there are so many people" (194).
Krakauer tries "to make sense of McCandless's . . . death,
yet his essence remains slippery, vague, elusive" (439). Dillard asks,
"How can an individual count?" (195) For this paper, I would like
to discuss what makes a human death significant or insignificant. As
always, your paper should be built around your own argument about this
topic as it emerges from your consideration of the readings. Thus three
perspectives on how a death can be meaningful or meaningless -- Krakauer's,
Dillard's, and your own -- should be put into dialogue in your paper.
Circle or underline your thesis in both your rough draft and final paper.
This should be one to two sentences long and should appear on the first
page.
Before you turn your paper in, make sure all of the following are true:
- My essay analyzes the readings rather than merely summarizing them.
- I have included effective and correct uses of quotation in every paragraph.
- I have avoided repeating grammatical errors I have made in previous
essays.
- Each paragraph meets the paragraph checklist.
- I have presented and argued a thesis.
Craig Eliason, Rutgers University, Fall 2000
Back to top
Malcolm Gladwell and Jon Krakauer
In your last paper you were asked to consider the possible motivation behind Chris McCandless's decision to abandon conventional knowledge. For this paper we are going to examine the excerpt from Krakauer's book in a new light-in relation to Malcolm Gladwell's ideas. In his chapter, "The Power of Context," Malcolm Gladwell argues for another way to understand one's relation to "meaning" and knowledge. While Gladwell looks at the epidemic of crime in New York City in the mid 1980s and the dramatic drop in crime rates a decade later and Jon Krakauer ruminates on a young man's "strange spiritual quest" (Krakauer 420) into the Alaskan wilderness, both authors contemplate the nature of "character". One seemingly incidental connection between both essays is the description of graffiti in the context of this contemplation of "character." For this paper, I would like you all to engage in some contemplation of your own on this particular connection. Why do you think each author chooses a visual representation such as graffiti to embody his ideas about character?
Stephanie André, Rutgers University, Spring 2005
Back to top
Defining Truth (Assignment 1)
Both Jon Krakauer and Tim O’Brien, in the assigned readings, stress the importance of trying to arrive at the truth of what happened to their central characters. In “Selections from Into the Wild,” Krakauer does a great deal of investigation in his attempt to determine the truth about why Chris McCandless felt the need to escape into the Alaskan wilderness, and why he died in the endeavor. Similarly, although “How to Tell a True War Story,” is actually a work of fiction, Tim O’Brien stresses repeatedly that he is seeking to arrive at the truth about what happened to him and his fellow soldiers during the Viet Nam War.
How do you define and understand the “truth”, in light of the truth that both Krakauer and O’Brien are trying to arrive at in their work? Does it mean the same thing to you as it does to either or both authors? Do you feel that one of them is more successful than the other in his attempt to arrive at the truth? Why or why not?
Mary J. Oltarzewski, Rutgers University, Fall 2005
Back to top
|
