Christopher McCandless was found dead in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.
He graduated 2 years earlier, having what we would call a “promising” career ahead of him. But Alex had other plans. He donated his 25.000$ worth of savings to charity, left his family and society as a whole.
Disgusted by the rat race, conformity and addiction to security that defines the middle class, and inspired by writers like Jack London, Thoreau and Tolstoy, he started to search truer way of living. Trying to find the essence of the human experience.
“…The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”
Video Review of Into The Wild
Notes
📝 Don’t go to the Alaskan wilderness without a map if you lack wilderness experience.
📝 Be careful with seeds. They can be poisonous even though the plant is edible.
📝 “Happiness [is] only real when shared” The last written statement of McCandless. Some people find this statement to be profound. But i think it’s more a result of that he is starving to death, alone ,in the wilderness than a profound insight.
VERDICT
Overall great book! Reads like fiction and gives you a lot to think about. The movie is not half bad either!
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ out of 5
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Related books:
If you enjoyed Into The Wild then you might like the books:
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit – Michael Finkel
Born to Run – Christopher McDougall
Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer
The Comfort Crisis – Michael Easter
Find more great reads on my book reviews page and the Great Books List
Video Reviews every week on YouTube
Did you see the film?
I did! I loved it! such nice vistas and overall great production!