Connor Hedges Into the Wild Dialectical Journal

Not sure what to write for your commentary? Here are some tips:

Jenee Gossard of the UCLA Writing Project (1997) suggests the following sentence starters for students who
struggle with right-hand column responses:
I wonder I noticed
I began to think of I was surprised
I like the idea If I had been
I know the feeling I was reminded of

Common reader responses include:

Feelings (boring, sad, exciting, confusing, strange)
Questions (I wonder why the author wrote these boring parts?)
Images (pictures in the mind, with full sensory response)
Favorite (or detested) words and phrases
Echoes (of other books, movies, television shows, headlines, songs, or poems)
Reaction to characters or events (That Raskolnikov is so self-absorbed!)
Memories (people, events, places youve known)
Connections (to other ideas, people, feelings, books)

Chapter Page # Quotation Commentary

4 29 One hundred twenty-three dollars in I noticed that Chris didnt need any money
legal tender was promptly reduced to to live a good life. The more simple, the
ash and smoke. better.

4 28-29 But there was a way to avoid such Chris decided to take the more adventurous
aggravation: He could simply abandon route, leaving his car in the middle of
the Datsun and resume his odyssey on nowhere, starting his new journey by foot.
foot. This was his mindset from then on.

4 26 ...Walsh found a Giannini guitar, a In whos right mind would abandon all of
saucepan containing $4.93 in loose their belongings? Chris was tired of the
change, a football, a garbage bag full of norm, and wanted to get off the grid as soon
old clothes, a fishing rod and tackle, a as possible. This was his first step.
new electric razor, a harmonica, a set of
jumper cables, twenty-five pounds of
rice, and in the glove compartment, the
keys to the vehicles ignition.

4 He told us about abandoning his car, He didnt need money to survive, and was
about burning all his money. I said, Why happy regardless of his circumstances.
would you want to do that? Claimed he Unfortunately, he couldve used the money
didnt need money. he burned for food along the way.

1 5 Alex admitted that the only food in his He clearly was not prepared for this trip,
pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. with little to nothing to be able to survive in
any condition.

2 12 I am injured, near death, and too weak In his unprepared travels lead him to a place
to hike out of here. of death. With barely any food/water, he
wasnt able to make it, which led him to
decisions in the wrong mindset.

2 13 The remains were so badly I was not surprised how quickly Chris died,
decomposed that it was impossible to due to the lack of food he packed and not
Connor Hedges Into the Wild Dialectical Journal
determine exactly when McCandless
had died, but the coroner could find no
sign of massive internal injuries or
broken bones.
5 38 When his camera was ruined and
McCandless stopped taking
photographs, he also stopped keep a
journal, a practice he didnt resume until
he went to Alaska the next year.
5 41 ...He told his fellow employees that he
lived across the river in laughlin.
Whenever they offered him a ride home
after work, he made excuses and
politely declined.
5 44 ...He had a good time when he was
around people, a real good time.
6 54 Look, Mr. Franz, he declared, you dont
need to worry about me. I have a
college education. Im not destitute. Im
living like this by choice.
6 55 McCandless was thrilled to be on his
way north, and he was relieved as well-
relieved that he had again evaded the
impending threat of human intimacy, of
friendship and all the messy emotional
baggage that comes with it.
6 58 Astoundingly, the eighty-one year old
man took the brash twenty-four-year-old
vagabonds advice to heart
6 60 ...I turned my van around, drove back to
the store, and bought a bottle of
whiskey. And then I went out into the
desert and drank it.
6 55 One can only speculate about why
Franz became so attached to
McCandless so quickly, but the affection
he felt was genuine, intense, and
unalloyed.
7 62 During those four weeks in Carthage,
McCandless worked hard, doing dirty,
tedious jobs that nobody else wanted to
tackle
7 63 He acted like it was hard for him to be
around people. I just figured that was
being prepared one bit for this adventure.
During this hiatus, his journal wasnt
touched, so nobody knew where he was.
Once he went to Alaska the next year, we
knew exactly where and when he was in a
specific area.
This shows he was outcast, not wanting to
interact with his fellow co-workers, and
wanting to strictly be by himself, doing his
own thing.
This was a rare occasion where he wanted
to talk to others, rather than being in his own
state of mind like the rest of the time.
Heres Chris once again wanting to barely
interact with someone. Even though Mr,
Franz wanted to engage in a conversation
with him, and being an outcast, hes still not
interested in talking to others.
His social qualities are still not in the right
gear. Mr. Franz went out of the way several
times for McCandless to get to where he
wanted to, and it almost seems like he
doesnt appreciate it one bit.
Mr. Franz listened to McCandless, putting
most of his belongings away, and moved out
to the spot that he was staying in before he
had left.
Flashback to when Mr. Franz kid had died
in a car accident, and he went directly to
alcohol to try and solve his problems.
McCandless almost became a son to him.
After Mr. Franz found out that Chris had
passed away, it was a deja vu back to the
passing of his son. Its like he thought of it
almost as the same exact thing.
He was willing to work hard, regardless of
the jobs thrown at him. This was shown in
many instances.
This would be an example of him being an
outcast, almost scared to engage in
Connor Hedges Into the Wild Dialectical Journal
because hed spent so much time by
himself.
7 63 He said he could tell me things that he
couldnt tell the others. You could see
something was gnawing at him.
8 71 Entering the wilderness purposefully ill-
prepared, and surviving a near-death
experience does not make you a better
human, it makes you damn lucky.
8 85 McCandless didnt conform particularly
well to bush-casualty stereotype.
Although he was a rash, untutored in the
ways of the backcountry, incautious to
the point of foolhardiness, he wasnt
incompetent.
8 71 Over the past 15 years, Ive run into
several McCandless types out in the
country. Same story: idealistic, energetic
young guys who overestimated
themselves, underestimated the country
9 92 ...McCandless sounds eerily like Ruess
when he declares in a postcard to
Wayne Westerberg that, Ive decided
that im going to live my life for some
time to come. The freedom and simple
beauty of it is just too good to pass up.
10 101 Sam, nine years older than Chris, had
seen a short article about the hiker in
the Washington Post a few days earlier,
but, he allows, It didnt occur to me that
the hiker might be Chris. Never even
crossed my mind.
11 111 Chris had so much talent, Walt
Continues,but if you tried to coach him,
to polish his skill, to bring out that final
ten percent, a wall went up.
11 113 Chris didnt understand how people
could possibly be allowed to go hungry,
especially in this country, says Billie.
11 112 He believed doing well was all mental,
a simple matter of harnessing whatever
energy was available.
12 118 He was almost crying, fighting back the
tears, telling Dad that even though
theyd had their differences over the
years, he was grateful for all the things
conversation with several people.
He didnt want to keep it all inside him,
rather talk to someone about it, and possibly
get help.
Was he asking to die? He was very lucky in
many situations, almost dying, and
eventually making it several times.
He hadnt gone on a trip this extreme, not
knowing many things out there. His
unpreparedness showed that he was
lacking knowledge..
Many people have entered the wilderness
with a mindset like Chris, and werent ready
to face what was out there. These
characteristics changed over their time,
ultimately learning from their experiences.
Chris loved the thought of being on his own,
with freedom to do whatever he wanted.
This was shown in several instances, in
which he didnt want to be involved in others
business.
A fellow hiker that he had met, hadnt
realized that the news was about Chris, and
hen he found out it was devastating.
Its almost like he knew how much talent he
had, and wasnt wanting anyone to change
it in some way.
His thought of the many starving people in
Southern Africa intrigued him, wondering
how that is even possible that they have
little to no food supply.
It was all based on how much energy you
want to put towards, all thought all up in the
head.
Was it almost like Chris was leading his dad
on? Was he hinting at leaving, letting all of
his feeling out? Many questions may arise,
but there could be no reason behind Chris
Connor Hedges Into the Wild Dialectical Journal
Dad had done for him.
12 118 Chris said how much he respected Dad
for starting from nothing, working his
way through college, busting his ass to
support eight kids. It was a moving
speech. Everybody there was all choked
up. And then he left on his trip.
13 129 Ten months after Chris death, Carine
still grieves deeply for her brother. I cant
seem to get through a day without
crying, she says with a look of
puzzlement.
14 134 My suspicion that McCandlesss death
was unplanned, that it was a terrible
accident, comes from reading those few
documents he left behind and from
listening to the men and women who
spent time with him over the final year.
14 134 As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-
absorbed, intermittently reckless,
moody. I disappointed my father in the
usual ways.
16 159 Said he didnt want to see a single
person, no airplanes, no sign of
civilization. He wanted to prove to
himself that he could make it it on his
own, without anybody elses help.
16 166 Although McCandless was enough of a
realist to know that hunting game was
an unavoidable component of living off
the land, he had always been
ambivalent about killing animals.
17 174 ...thinking that his escape route route
had been cut off, he returned to the bus-
a reasonable course of action, given his
topographical ignorance.
17 185 I bring up McCandlesss hubris and the
dumb mistakes he made-the two or
three readily avoidable blunders that
ended up costing him his own life.
trip.
Chris work ethic came from his very own
dad. They both were always willing to just
get the job done. What seemed like his dad
being his role model, why did he leave out
of the bleu?
When Chris left for his adventure, and his
relationship with his family declining, he
didnt seem to care about them anymore.
From the notes sent back and forth between
the people he met on the roads, it was clear
that McCandless death was not a planned
suicide. He died from starvation, due to his
unpreparedness from the get-go.
Krakauer related himself to McCandless,
trying to take a path like he did, ending up
living a lifestyle similar to him, surviving.
This was his way of isolating himself from
the rest of the world. It was indeed a test to
see how he could survive, without thinking
death was in near sight.
McCandless was very hesitant to killing a
variety of animals, thinking whether he
would consider regretting after the fact. He
did overcome those thoughts, thinking that
killing these animals are his way to survive.
McCandless feared for his life with the
Teklanikas violent flow, clearly showing that
he didnt want to die, and just get to his
desired locations without any harm.
This dates back to the lack of food and
supplies he brought, plus the hesitation to
kill for food, which led to other costly events.