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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Chapter 4 - Detrital Wash
Explanation and Analysis—Which Governs Least:
In Chapter 4, Chris finds an abandoned Nissan Datson at Detrital Wash. In trying to start the car while the engine was wet, he drains the battery. Though he knows he would need help to get the car running, he worries about what questions a police officer might ask if they came to his aid: the car's registration and Chris's license are both expired, and Chris was trespassing when he found the car. Chris considers how he would respond to a police officer asking him to explain himself, making an allusion to Thoreau:
Truthful responses to these queries were not likely to be well received by the rangers. McCandless could endeavor to explain that he answered to statutes of a higher order—that as a latter-day adherent of Henry David Thoreau, he took as gospel the essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and thus considered it his moral responsibility to flout the laws of the state. It was improbable, however, that deputies of the federal government would share his point of view.
Chris "flouts" laws, not believing himself to be beholden to the structures of normal society. As Krakauer explains, this is because Chris is a "latter-day adherent of Henry David Thoreau." Specifically, Krakauer references "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," Thoreau's essay first published in 1849. In it, Thorough describes how one should value conscience over compliance with unjust laws: in other words, one should not follow a law if it conflicts with their better judgment, no matter the consequences.
There are a great many allusions to Thoreau in the book, both in the epigrams to the chapters and within the text. But this allusion to "Civil Disobedience" in particular clarifies Chris's outlook. His distaste is directed most often toward structures of power that he sees as unjust. Chris is not a misandrist: he does not leave society because he dislikes his fellow man. Instead, as he learned from Thoreau, Chris leaves society in order to disobey the laws with which he disagrees. In the scene above, though, Chris understands that this view will antagonize law enforcement. Throughout the book, Chris creates tension between himself and the structures of authority, as shown in the allusion to Thoreau.
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Chapter 9 - Davis Gulch
Explanation and Analysis—Yawp!:
Krakauer devotes Chapter 9 to the story of Everett Ruess, a hitchhiker and photographer who traveled around the southwest in the 1930s. In the chapter, Krakauer includes a long quotation describing Everett, written by the author Wallace Stegner:
"Deliberately he punished his body, strained his endurance, tested his capacity for strenuousness. He took out deliberately over trails that Indians and old timers warned him against. He tackled cliffs that more than once left him dangling halfway between talus and rim….From his camps by the water pockets or the canyons or high on the timbered ridges of Navajo Mountain he wrote long, lush, enthusiastic letters to his family and friends, damning the stereotypes of civilization, chanting his barbaric adolescent yawp into the teeth of the world."
This quotation is from Stegner's 1942 book Mormon Country, which included a chapter called "Artist in Residence..." about Ruess. Mormon Country was part of a 29-part nonfiction series called American Folkways, which described various American regions; Stegner uses Everett as the prototypical traveler through the mountains and deserts in America's frontier. Stegner is one of the pre-eminent writers of the American West, so Krakauer uses this quotation to lend legitimacy to his own story of Everett. And because Krakauer uses Everett's story to contextualize Chris's trip into the wild, Krakauer also uses Stegner's quotation to legitimize his work at large.
At the end of the quoted passage above, Stegner makes an allusion himself to the poem "Song of Myself" written by the American writer Walt Whitman. Stegner draws the phrase "barbaric adolescent yawp" from section 52 of Whitman's poem "Song of Myself": "I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." These famous lines represent Whitman's belief in the value of freedom, even unto anarchy. This desire, of course, is reflected in both Everett and Chris. Together, the allusions to both Stegner and Whitman situate Krakauer's narrative in a tradition of individualist American writers.
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Explanation and Analysis—NEMO 1934:
Chapter 9 tells the story of Everett Ruess, a mountaineer who traveled around the American southwest in the 1930s. Krakauer describes Everett's similarity to Chris through the "nom de plume" that each liked to carve in public spaces. Everett's nom de plume was an allusion to Captain Nemo. Here, Krakauer describes each of them inscribing their aliases:
Everett Ruess carved his nom de plume into the canyon wall below a panel of Anasazi pictographs, and he did so again in the doorway of a small masonry structure built by the Anasazi for storing grain. “NEMO 1934,” he scrawled, no doubt moved by the same impulse that compelled Chris McCandless to inscribe “Alexander Supertramp/May 1992” on the wall of the Sushana bus—an impulse not so different, perhaps, from that which inspired the Anasazi to embellish the rock with their own now-indecipherable symbols.
Everett's nickname references Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Jules Verne's science-fiction adventure novel from 1870. Krakauer notes that Everett read this book "many times," idolizing "the purehearted protagonist, Captain Nemo, who flees civilization and severs his "every tie upon the earth." Nemo is the captain of the Nautilus, a submarine on which he and his crew attempt to escape the growing power of imperialism. Nemo's mission to separate himself from society, as well as his name, meaning "nobody" in Latin, bears similarities to Chris and Everett. But Nemo, importantly, travels with his crew aboard his submarine, so he is not a perfect comparison to Chris and Everett's lonely expeditions.
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Chapter 12 – Annandale
Explanation and Analysis—Old Artificer:
In Chapter 12, Chris drives up the West Coast toward Canada. Krakauer describes his long trip through an extended allusion to the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by the Irish author James Joyce:
From Orick, McCandless continued north up the coast. He passed through Pistol River, Coos Bay, Seal Rock, Manzanita, Astoria; Hoquiam, Humptulips, Queets; Forks, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Seattle. “He was alone,” as James Joyce wrote of Stephen Dedalus, his artist as a young man. “He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in 1916 and remains one of the preeminent works of literary Modernism. In the novel, Joyce relays an explicitly autobiographical story about his own life and education, told through his fictional alter-ego, Stephen Daedalus. Krakauer's quotation is from the climax of Portrait, when Stephen walks down Dollymount Strand, a beach near Dublin. While walking down the beach, Stephen experiences an aesthetic epiphany and feels that he must learn how to express the beauty of the world in words. Krakauer uses the passage to describe Chris's hopeful trip up the coast, in which Chris, like Stephen, was "near to the wild heart of life." The allusion to Joyce is appropriate, as Portrait is a novel centered around an opinionated, solitary young man, much like Into the Wild.
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Explanation and Analysis—Reaganite Thoreauvian:
In Chapter 12, set in 1988, Chris grows more angry with injustice and its prevalence across the world. He enrolls in more classes at Emory on poverty and discrimination. But Krakauer clarifies that Chris's politics cannot be boiled down to simply left or right, which he shows through an allusion to Thoreau:
Indeed, he delighted in ridiculing the policies of the Democratic Party and was a vocal admirer of Ronald Reagan. At Emory he went so far as to co-found a College Republican Club. Chris’s seemingly anomalous political positions were perhaps best summed up by Thoreau’s declaration in “Civil Disobedience”: “I heartily accept the motto—‘That government is best which governs least.’ ” Beyond that his views were not easily characterized.
Here, Krakauer references the famous first line of "Civil Disobedience." (Krakauer also references the passage in Chapter 4, but as a more general antecedent to Chris's outlook). The allusion serves as a definition for Chris's views, which lie outside the normal American political spectrum. Chris "admires" both Democrats and Republicans at times—because, in fact, he primarily supports "that government which governs least."
This backstory, especially through the allusion to Thoreau, contrasts the rest of the novel. This passage depicts Chris as connected to the larger world, with rigorous opinions on politics based on historical research, while founding clubs for like-minded people. This younger, more social Chris serves to highlight Chris's individuality later in his life.
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