Responses to this message:
His obession with truth seemed to be triggered in part from a finding out that his father's divorce from his first wife wasn't a clean as he had been led to believe.
And the author makes an argument that part of what happened to him was the result of one small mistake in a zero tolerance situation -- he ate something he shouldn't have, and it left him too weak to continue to forage in a situation where there was no margin for error. (There is a young adult book called Hatchet about a kid who survives a plane crash with only a hatchet and has to survive in the wild -- it impressed on me the situation where you have to keep finding enough food to find enough food to keep going to find more food -- related to the Long Winter book in the Little House on the Prairie series where they spent all day twisting straw and grinding grain in order to have enough food and warmth to do the same thing the next day in order to survive.)
And the reason for going into the wild "unprepared" as it were is the same reason anyone works without a net -- because it isn't the same when the net is there -- anyone taking a risk driving a car too fast or trying someother stunt recognizes the combination of stupidity and risk -- but the survivors too often attribute their survival to merit instead of luck. Basically, the kid in Into the Wild and been taking bigger and bigger risks, and finally went too far.
As a middle aged parent, I recognize him as a stupid kid, but I probably did things just as stupid when I was young.
Responses to this message:
Post a response to this discussion thread
And check this out: The Top Posters' Page