Literary letter by Ilya

Literary Appreciation

Dear Jon Krakauer,

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, is an elaborate book about your perspective about the story of Christopher McCandless. I do like the way that you compare your life and your expeditions to McCandless, but I hate the story of McCandless. This book seems to glorify the spiral downward of McCandless, maybe even inspiring others. From my point of view, I did not live in his shoes; it seems as he was extremely selfish. He might have not have had the best parents, but they were in his life and he had a loving sister. He did not care for the bonds he had made with friends or his family.

People do not always have the time to spend time with others, does this mean they do not care for them? Of course it does not, sometimes my mother comes back from work exhausted and does not pay much attention to me, I try my best to do everything around the house so she could rest. People often have other things going on in life and are worried about something else. It is dumbfounding that McCandless left his family and the people he met on the way just to leave society and end up dying.

This man is obviously smart with a double major bachelor degree, he had everything in life to be happy for and he threw it all away. A lot of people nowadays do not have a mother and father in the house hold, some people do not have either; this man was very fortunate to have both parents and a loving sister. Even if the two parents were not perfect, it does not mean they were bad they did their job raising him. He had a nice car, a college degree, and people who loved him. I just can not understand why he would do such an idiotic decision to leave everything behind. With his death there is no doubt that his sister and parents would be heartbroken for the rest of their lives. They would blame themselves and ask the question, why were we not good enough? In conclusion, I do not get the point of glorifying this man’s brainless decisions, and maybe inspiring others.

Sincerely,

Ilya Klimoshenko