Into The Wild – Jessica McFadden

McCandless and the Metamyth:
The Wild Collisions of an Isolation Myth Inverted

Jon Krakauer’s interest in the life story of Chris McCandless might have originated in the realm of relative obscurity but it no longer stands in isolation. To the contrary: it has become a place of collective fascination, conversation, and conflict. Krakauer has a hand on the myth of McCandless, on its inception, reception and longevity, yet, at the same time, the myth has a life of its own outside of Krakauer’s framing. This reveals a characteristic quality of the myth— it is a work of creation that recreates itself into perpetuity or obscurity. Mythos is as much the act of storytelling as it is, in the traditional sense, the entity of a story, for what is a story without the act of telling?

Judith Butler refers to action, in her theoretical work on gender, as that through which representation is reproduced. Within this reference is her definition of gender as a reproductive and continuous act. More specifically, history and its particulars are reenacted through performative gender acts, she asserts in her pivotal essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Butler’s theory can be applied to mythos, as I’ve suggested that it is only useful and relevant through its retelling across time and in the now. If we, as storytellers and story-receivers and -believers, accept that myth, like gender, is a performative act, then with it comes a sense of renewal and shared responsibility. Krakauer’s myth of McCandless, after all, is layered with his idea of McCandless’ own myth: as an author, he aims to tell a story in his own words that he believes belongs in some way to McCandless. As a result, we are practically forced, when reading Into the Wild, to consider two myths happening, or being told, in tandem and in one single unit. The work of any author, by this definition, is the act of meta-myth-making. Thus, the implications of this collective telling abound, forming a movement, a mythical concerto in which McCandless-as-a-character-in-his-own-myth, McCandless-as-a-character-in-Krakauer’s-myth, and McCandless-as-character-in-our-renewed-myths play in major and minor chords, in both discordant harmony.

The story of McCandless, like the story of anyone or anything else, is a public domain arisen from the mythical origin of the individual consciousness imbedded in a collective consciousness. His is particularly powerful, perhaps because its narrative puzzle pieces do not match up nicely, or normatively, enough with other myths or with current trends in the general population. The myth of the outlier, the rugged individualist who seeks through a trip away from civilization and into Alaska to actualize the myth of outlier existence, is not an isolated myth nor is McCandless an isolated character; however, we share myths like we share identities and geographies: collectively, despite the inner isolation we feel on an individual level. The McCandless Myth reflects, too, that despite their pervasiveness in our lives, our collective mythic-identity acts do not transcend the experience, mythical or otherwise, of isolation. Ironically, isolation is the inverse of mythtelling; there can be no myth without connection. It is, therefore, important to consider the ways in which the McCandless Myth functions to situate and expose the myth of individualist isolation within collective action and to examine the ways in which myths are locations of cultural and cognitive collision.

Krakauer begins the novel with Chris McCandless’ last note; yet the first narrative voice that is introduced belongs to Gallien, a traveler who gave “The Hitchhiker” (Alex/Chris) a ride and transported him as far as a few miles into the Stampede Trail. Gallien reports that Alex McCandless happily refused his common sense offerings, saying “‘I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters’” (7). Shortly thereafter, Gallien comments that he figured that if Alex felt hungry he would simply walk out of the woods to the highway, because “that’s what any normal person would do” (7). Accounts of short journeys with one form or another of McCandless, like Gallien’s, are not necessarily intended to be taken literally or used for any kind of detective purposes. Rather, they create questions, poke holes in rationalities, and build gaps in the narrative. Consider that we’re informed about McCandless through Krakauer’s account of Gallien’s account of Alex. Mythical McCandless comes through the narrative like a matryoshka doll: all, somehow, carved and painted copies of McCandless but not one is an original.

Through this mythical matryoshkan McCandless, we’re introduced to both the collective nature of relaying and the way in which such relaying addresses cultural issues of normality. There is power behind this collective myth because it questions, conflicts with, and outrageously laughs in the face of contemporary Western societal values. Some mythologists interested in McCandless will find his story tragic, while others will scoff at it and brush it off as a cautionary tale of foolishness and oddness. Myths of power that reincarnate chronically are controversial and mysterious. In order to be this way, the myth must enact a transgression against cultural norms. Krakauer’s genius is in his ability to deliberately engage in collective storytelling. It happens whether authors try to do it or not, but Krakauer’s method is one that consciously draws itself to opportunities for discord, mystery, and intensity. He’s a meta myth-maker, a myth-maker who intuitively or through study knows the perpetual motion and chaos of myths.

From the get-go, Krakauer gives credence to the idea of a collective mythos-in-action; his own story does not solely belong to him nor does he intend to express McCandless one-sidedly through his lens. Instead, Krakauer creates a mythical collage of perspectives on McCandless, including snippets of McCandless’ own account of himself. This narrative method reveals the shared nature of and responsibility that comes with a given story or mythical figure. Whether or not McCandless was aware of it, in his journey, he inserted himself into a string of stories with a number of common themes and became a mythical figure in the process. His choices and written words, in Krakauer’s novel, become a vital part of the myth, but are not more important than any other voice in the disharmonious mythical choir.

Even the dual nature of McCandless (as Chris and Alex) serves to dismantle the notion that we are in control of our own myth and reestablishes the recognition of collective storytelling— he, our mythic protagonist, is at least two: Alex to some, Chris to others, McCandless, still to others. His partitioned nature suggests that he is not an entity but a compilation, and this is one powerful reason to trust that there is much to be learned in this myth that goes beyond an unorthodox trip into the alienation and isolation of Alaska. McCandless, after all, seeks unity with the Alaskan wilderness while deserting his known surroundings and connections. Aside from raising questions about an individual’s motivations, the juxtaposition of his journey teaches us, narratively, about juxtaposition in relation to the nature of the myth. When reading Into the Wild, there are opportunities adrift from the surface to read beyond motives, characteristics, and decisions. If we read such narratives with an interest in plot and character development but without being bound to literal mythological devices, we can begin to engage the deeper modes of connection at work. The rhetoric of McCandless’ shared myth reaches, not completely away from but, deeper than his upper-middle-class environs, his father’s betrayals, his copy of War and Peace, his rejection of survival gear, or the cause of his death. While all of those details matter and the story could not exist without them, its function within the genre of a mythical and mythically-minded human race tells us more.

McCandless and the Metamyth:
The Wild Collisions of an Isolation Myth Inverted

The way the myth is exposed through McCandless is perhaps what is more fascinating than the way McCandless is exposed through the myth.
The collective construction of the myth also comes across in Krakauer’s interweaving throughout the book of excerpts from adventure-themed novels and characters that were pivotal in McCandless’ journey. He brings this supplementary dialogue into the narrative in two ways: at the beginnings of chapters and in the narrative itself. It is unclear whether such passages were meaningful to the individual, McCandless, or passages that spoke to Krakauer. Fortunately, being clear on such an issue doesn’t matter, and, in fact, may interfere with a reading of myth itself. In the body of the narrative, Krakauer writes, “‘He was alone’ as James Joyce wrote of Stephan Dedalus, his artist as a young man. ‘He was unheeded, happy, and near the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and willful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight’” (31). The passage itself is cyclical and repetitive, but, in addition, the loop builds a fictional and external “He” into McCandless’ story so that McCandless and Joyce’s Dedalus share the narrative space, or mythical spotlight, if only for a moment. The Dedalus myth is melded together with the McCandless myth by Krakauer in such a way that it isn’t necessary for him to justify or clarify or interpret for his readers its inclusion. The paragraph ends with the quote and the next begins with the start of a day during McCandless’ journey. Seamlessness between characters indicates that their myths are similar and that each can occupy space within the other’s myth. Where there might, with interpretation and explanation, have been invasion and insertion, there is, instead, collectivity: and, ultimately, connection.

Connection in Into the Wild is not simply a matter of McCandless’ personal connections; connection is also present in the connections that Krakauer brings to his telling of the story and the connections that we bring as readers of the story. As far as Krakauer’s lens of connection is concerned, we can assume that his fascination with the McCandless myth did not begin with McCandless. His inclusion of stories of other McCandless-like figures reveals that a personal myth drove his interest in McCandless and that McCandless is not the only incarnation of this myth. It also suggests that Krakauer might have, intentionally or inadvertently, shaped McCandless’ story according to his own underlying myth. Because of this, we cannot assume that the McCandless myth is an individualistic myth; in fact, it is glaringly apparent that, in the most obvious respects, at least two myths are at work— not just in tandem, but also entwined: Krakauer’s McCandless.

Beyond this, there are other sources that serve the construction of the myth, inside of it and outside of it. Krakauer’s pre-McCandless myth of the adventurer, something we cannot pinpoint but can still surmise, is especially evident during the latter half of the book, in which he introduces a slew of McCandless-alikes. In Chapter Eight: Alaska, Krakauer spends a great deal of time narrating comparable stories of figures, like McCandless, who have gone down in the margins of Alaskan state memory as having attempted to achieve whatever it is that was “achieved” by McCandless. Krakauer refers to the lore, and Alaskan wisdom, which holds McCandless a “dreamy half-cocked greenhorn” and others as “countercultural idealists” (72). He refers to a man that he, himself, had run into on the shore of Prince William Sound as “the wayward genius” (73). Gene Rosellini, this wayward genius, ran a decade-long experiment, trying to survive “independent of modern technology…[using] the most primitive tools, which he fashioned from native materials with his own hands” (74). There is a fascination in Krakauer’s prose as he brings to life Rosellini, a passion that is evident even in his fictional characterization of the man as a “genius.” Fascination doesn’t quite tell the entire story, as it is Krakauer’s inclusion of a range of McCandless copies that changes the way that we view his narrative and think about the nature of mythtelling. From Rosellini to Waterman, the “socially awkward man-child,” to, the dream-poisoned amateur photographer, McCunn (76), Krakauer gives each marvel man a fair amount of narrative play.

Oddly, however, he feels the need in the midst of revealing the spirit of McCandless through these other figures to separate McCandless from them, asserting that unlike those labeled nutcases and sociopaths, “McCandless was something else— although, precisely what,” he notes, “is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps” (85). In this moment, Krakauer asserts his subjective values above the emergent and divergent open plane of values inherent in the narrative itself. It is important to him to classify McCandless as a pilgrim, to separate him from the others, to exonerate him from suspicion of illness and sociopathy. This is perhaps one of the strangest moments in the book, yet if we are attentive readers concerned as much with mythos as with McCandless, it only serves as a window into the layered and entrenched composition of the myth. Krakauer’s moment of subjectivity, even if a slip-up, reveals the questionable and compiled nature of the myth.

There is no McCandless of Into the Wild if there is no Krakauer with Krakauer’s intimate fears and desires. The desires that Krakauer brings to the narrative shape it— they become part of it. What this does is pokes holes in literalist views of stories. Concurrently, it pokes holes in Krakauer’s reliability as a narrator. Such holes are healthy and necessary if we are to see a more comprehensive picture of what goes into any given story. Krakauer’s compulsion to wipe out any possibility of questionable sanity using the recognizable and romantic metaphor of the pilgrim also reveals his inability to separate himself from McCandlessin the business of mythtelling. If he cannot do so for the sake of the myth’s objectivity, neither can we read without our own biases. Myths are the breeding grounds of bias, there’s no way around it.

Another example of Krakauer coming out of, or on top of, the McCandless Myth is obvious in the proportion and delegation of narrative time. He spends an entire chapter on a McCandless-alike that he deems more worthy, or more alike, than the others: “a peculiar twenty-year-old boy [who] walked into the desert and never came out. His name was Everett Ruess” (85). At the end of this chapter, Krakauer likens McCandless and Ruess to fifth and sixth century Irish monks who were thought to have made “remarkable voyages…undertaken chiefly from the wish to find lonely places, where these anchorites might dwell in peace, undisturbed by the turmoil and temptations of the world” (97). Not only is this significant because of the obvious presence of Krakauer’s own romantic myth of his McCandless, but it is also significant because it adds another layer to our knowledge of myths: groups of people, like individuals, can be embedded in a myth, creating a typological figure that is connected to and separate from itself. The more that he sends forth the message that McCandless is his, the less McCandless seems to belong to him and the more he seems to belong to the collective scrutiny of a continually evolving myth with a vital momentum of its own. A myth is a collectively occupied and constantly exchanged entity, one that unwrites itself as it is written and one whose meaning depends on the given moment, the given interpretive angle, the teller, and the receiver. All processes are shared and all meaning is skewed in the cacophony of mythic collectivity.

Furthermore, seamless collectivity in the meta myth does not necessarily indicate agreement or fluid cooperation. In other words, connection does not equal harmony and, more often than not, connection is full of discord. Krakauer makes this evident by relaying details of McCandless’ family life. Krakauer also brings this to the surface in his ongoing inclusion of narrative voices that question and criticize McCandless for various reasons.

McCandless and the Metamyth:
The Wild Collisions of an Isolation Myth Inverted

The questioning and criticizing of the myth from within the myth is educational. It educates readers on the nature of the myth, a lesson that has little to do with McCandless and much to do with the metaphorical staying power of the McCandless Myth. Strewn throughout the myth and inherent in both its reading and telling are interpersonal, multipersonal complications and conflicts in opinion. Across the myth, there is also an invitation to readers to engage with the nature of mythos: to question McCandless’ story is to question the nature of the myth itself. To question the nature of myth itself requires that an individual feel implicated in some way by it. Not only implicated, but extricated.

This brings to the surface the notion that themes of alienation and connection in Into the Wild are not only interpreted out of McCandless’ actions and person; they are themes that reflect the cultural values of its collective reader, themes that are displaced into the myth and read out of it, rearticulated and recirculated in the continuously present act of mythtelling. This happens throughout the entire book, and is revealed most poignantly in moments when Krakauer directly addresses ongoing interpretive conflicts that exist within the narrative construct. For instance, when he reports that “when McCandless turned up dead in Alaska and the perplexing circumstances of his demise were reported in the news media, many people concluded that the boy must have been mentally ill” (70), he places the reader within the myth’s interpretive web of conflict. Charged words of judgment, whether Krakauer dispels or reinforces them, have a way of urging us to become part of the mythical telling order to assist in rendering a decision. McCandless’ myth, in particular because the individual McCandless so purposefully and haphazardly placed himself in a position of conflict without building on or solidifying his own myth with detailed explanations, makes us, as readers, hyperaware of our role in its production. We, by virtue of its piecemeal retelling, are handed the proverbial microscope and encouraged to participate in mythtelling. Krakauer reveals the constructed, multidimensional or many-masked, nature of the myth by piecing together its parts and acknowledging their sources.

You might wonder: if all names and elements of the stories can be juxtaposed in the process of a collective interpretation, then how can we ever agree on one set, one-dimensional story of McCandless? The answer is that we cannot. Mythical one-dimensionality is not possible: not for McCandless and not for any other myth. If there is a focal point in Krakauer’s book, it is the focal point of mythical construction. The perpetual juxtaposition inherent in myth-making, the shared process and act of mythtelling, and the discord and harmony of complex information-sharing are the most concrete elements that come out of the myth of McCandless. As readers who, in reading, simultaneously participate in the telling, or construction, of our source of reading, we straddle the borders between inception and reception, serving and shaping the myth through our actively read translations. We are the interlocutors, standing with one foot inside of its pages and one foot outside. McCandless found himself relating to his own comprehensive myth this way, with blind belief in it, conscious and unconscious construction of it, and a general sense of distrust as he lived it out. We can look to its source in modern society, we can place the blame in the modern collective malady of the soul, or “deficiency of psychic representation [that] hinders sensory, sexual, and intellectual life,” as does psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva (9). Or, we can focus, alternately, on making something from it: a new myth about myths, perhaps.

We can engage in somewhat self-deceptive unilateral myth-making processes, like the kind that drove McCandless to go to Alaska and, to some extent, Krakauer to study McCandless. Whenever we encounter myths like McCandless’, we do this, but we, as humans, are multimythical. We participate in the construction of many myths at the same time, inhabiting our chosen myths and the myths we encounter through circumstances. Ideally, the more aware we are of our constructive processes, the less we will need to believe in or solve any given myth in order to find it useful or fascinating. Into the Wild, with the help of all of us – especially Krakauer, takes us one step closer to a less-literalist operational mode of self-reflection: what might hold for us a kind of freedom— the freedom of awareness and connection without attachment.

Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Writing on the Body: A Gender and Culture Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. Web.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books. 1996. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. New Maladies of The Soul. New York: Columbia University Press. 1995. Print.

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