Into the Wild

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die.

These book club questions are adapted and selected from the discussion questions in Knopf Doubleday's Into the Wild Common Core ELA Teacher's Guide.

Book club questions for Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

How do Krakauer’s personal mountaineering experiences affect the story? Do you agree with his decision to not be an impartial biographer?

Had Chris lived, what do you think he would have done next?

The wilderness and the west have always been glamorized in American history and culture. Why do these places elicit such a hold on our imagination? Is their promise real?

"The prevailing Alaska wisdom held that McCandless was simply one more dreamy half-cocked greenhorn who went into the country expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found only mosquitoes and a lonely death." [p. 72] Are answers ever to be found in nature?

Chris adopts the trail name of "Alexander Supertramp." As Krakauer points out, “trail names” are nothing new. Many adventurers adopt new monikers. Why is this such an important ritual to Chris and others?

When Chris walks into the Alaskan interior with so few provisions, is he foolish, a highly principled ascetic or something else?

When Krakauer first published his account of Chris’s death in Outside magazine the story generated a lot of strongly-worded feedback. One writer accuses Chris of hubris, or exaggerated pride or self-confidence. Do you agree with this individual? Is hubris the reason Chris dies?

Imagine you’ve been tasked with responding to Chris’s critics. How would you reply to their critiques of his choices?

Had Chris not become so sick do you believe he would have found a way out in spite of lacking a detailed map and compass? Why or why not? Did Chris trash the cabins located near the bus? Why or why not?

The final two years of Chris' college education had been paid for or with a forty-thousand-dollar bequest left bya friend of the family’s. Is Chris ungrateful for the largesse he has received? How has he been shaped by the world of privilege he was raised in? Is he just rebelling against his father’s values?

Chris has taken pains to rid himself of all money, inheritance and cash though, as his mother points out, he was a born businessman. Why does he do this? We also know he felt this was a significant enough moment to record in his snapshot-journal. For whom is he recording the moment?

Krakauer draws upon his own experiences to explain Chris’s actions, but one might argue that such interpretation is merely speculation. As a biographer, does Krakauer crossed a line of professionalism by inserting his own voice into the story, making meaning where only blank spaces exist? Or does the opposite happen: are we granted a more nuanced version of the story through Krakauer’s own story?

Into the Wild Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Into the Wild discussion questions