Jon Krakauer, Selections from Into the Wild, "The Alaska Interior" and "The Stampede Trail," and:

• David Abram, "The Ecology of Magic"
• Benjamin Barber, "Time, Work, and Leisure in a Civil Society" and Peter Drucker, "The Age of Social Transformation"
• Annie Dillard, "The Wreck of Time"

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.

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?

Work with the readings from Abram and Krakauer only--we're done with Pollan and Heim (for the time being)!

Craig Eliason, Fall 2000

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Krakauer, Barber, and Drucker: Spiritual Work in the Knowledge Society

As we have seen, both Peter Drucker and Benjamin Barber are concerned with the appropriate role of education in the contemporary world. Drucker emphasizes the importance of the "formal knowledge" that one learns in schools. Barber, for his part, argues that while formal classroom learning is important, curricula should also include community service programs in order to teach social responsibility and citizenship.

For this paper, I would like you to write on the following question: What do you think Chris McCandless' attitude would be towards Barber's and/or Drucker's thoughts on education? McCandless referred to his own Alaskan adventure as a "spiritual pilgrimage." What do you think McCandless was trying to learn through his "strange spiritual quest"? Do you think he learned something valuable about life that is difficult, or even impossible, to learn in Drucker's "knowledge society" or Barber's "civil society"?

Brian Danoff, Fall 2000

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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:

1. My essay analyzes the readings rather than merely summarizing them.
2. I have included effective and correct uses of quotation in every paragraph.
3. I have avoided repeating grammatical errors I have made in previous essays.
4. Each paragraph meets the paragraph checklist.
5. I have presented and argued a thesis.

Craig Eliason, Fall 2000

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