Introduction to Into the Wild

It begins with Chris's body being found in an old abandoned bus. It back tracks through the weeks he was gone and on this journey. He survived for a little more than 100 days just on what was around him. He ate edible plants and berries to stay alive after deciding to go through the Alaskan wilderness. He one day chooses the wrong thing to eat and ends up eating a seed that poisoned him. In healthy people they probably could have fought off the poison chemicals but because he was not fully nourished he could not. He then suffers from weakness and starvation which was hypothesized after they found his body weighing 67 pounds. This then leads to his death alone and in the wilderness. Join me on the journey through this book. It will be an adventure!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_wild

Jon Krakauer Biography

Jon Krakauer, the author if Into the wild, was born on April 12, 1954. He was born in Massachusetts an went onto high school and college with achievments. he found his love in 1977. Her name was Linda Mariam Moore and they got married. After college he went on a climb in the wilderness which helped him write Into the Wild. At first he had a part time job as a fisherman and wrote for a magazine the other half of the time. Then on November 1983 he stopped being a part time fisherman and became a full time writer. He went on many dangerous adventures and even climbed Mount Everest. His journeys helped him to write the well known books that are in the world today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Krakauer

A Place I Would Like To Go!

A place in the United States I would like to go to is California. I have never been there before but there are people I know who have. I have heard it is so beautiful. It is warm and sunny all the time. There is great shopping, eating, and plenty of beaches to go to. There are also movie sets and tours around L.A. you can go on. Also, an old friend moved there a few years ago and I could visit and they could show us all the sights. One other reason I would like to go there is to go to all of the different dance conventions. In California they have so many great teachers to take class from that you can't here or many other places. I would love to take class from the choreographers I look up to. It would be a great experience to go to California to see and do all that is there!

Getting to know Chris McCandless through Direct and Indirect Characterization

Direct characterization is when the writer explicitly tells the reader what a character looks and acts like.
Examples:
1. " He didn't appear to be very old; eighteen, maybe nineteen at most." pg.3
2. " He was congenial and seemed well educated." pg. 5
3. " Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days or weeks prior to death. At the time of the autopsy, McCandless's remains weighed sixty-seven pounds. Starvation was posited at the most probable cause of death." pg. 15
4. " Odd young man he knew as Alex." pg.16
5. " Weterberg, a hyper kinetic man with thick shoulders and a black goatee, owns a grain elevator in Carthage..." pg. 16
6. " McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer.: pg.16
7. There was something about the youngsters eyes. Dark and emotive, they suggested a trace of exotic bloodin his heritage- Greek, maybe, or Chippewa- and conveyed a vulnerability that made Westerberg want to take the kid under his wing." pg. 16
8. " He ahd the kind of sensitive good looks that women made a big fuss over." pg.16
9. " He was nearsited and wore steel-rimmed glasses. He looked hungry." pg. 17
10. " you could tell right away that Alex was intelligent." pg. 18

Indirect characterization is when the writer shows the reader what the character does, says, thinks, and/or feels, and then lets the reader draw his/her own conclusions about the character.
Examples:
1. " Alex didn't seem to worried." pg. 6
2. " The word that comes to mind is excited. he couldn't wait to head out there and get started." pg. 6
3. " In may 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, where he'd been a columnist for, and editor of, the student newspaper, The Emry Wheel, and had distinguished himself as a history and anthropology major with a 3.72 grade-point average." pg. 20
4. " What Walt, Billie, and Carine didn't know when they flew down to Atlanta to attend Chris's commencement- what nobody knew- was that he would shortly donate all the money in his college fund to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger," pg.20
5. He already had a good car that worked fines and his parent insisted to buy him a new one in a letter written to Carine he said, " I can't believe they tried to buy me a car." pg. 21
6. " I'm going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect.: pg. 21
7. " To symbolize the complete severance from his previous life, he even adopted a new name. No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny." pg. 23
8. " Worried that he would be denied entry because he was carrying no identification, he sneaked into Mexico by paddling through the dam's open floodgates and shooting the spillway below." pg. 34
9. " But his entry of Mexico is either unnoticed or ignored. Alexander is Jubilant!" pg. 34
10. " Having reached his destination, McCandless slowed his pace, and his mood became more contemplative." pg. 35

According to the traits McCandless is a young and good looking man. Based off of what people said about him he was intelligent, got along with people very well and works hard at everything he does. He was a great man, full of desire to find his purpose in life.