Christopher McCandless is the protagonist of Into the Wild. His erudite, intellectual, iconoclastic, boundary-pushing vagabondism will captivate you. Or you’ll be repulsed by his selfishness, self-pity, and the manner he left behind a broken family.
Into the wild audiobook – a non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer shouldn’t be missed out on Free Audiobooks Online
Krakauer’s empathy with his topic is directly responsible for Into the wild audiobook‘s power. Krakauer is a good adventure writer, but he isn’t a great writer of language. He connects with Chris on a very deep, personal level by drawing on his own life experiences. He makes no attempt at the phony impartiality that is sometimes associated with “serious” serious journalism. Instead, Krakauer says outright that he recognized himself in Chris when he was younger, with the distinction that Krakauer lived through his childhood whereas Chris did not.
In Into the Wild audiobook, for example, Krakauer recounts his experience climbing the Devil’s Thumb in an autobiographical segment. This might easily have been a self-serving aside, but Krakauer uses that experience, as well as the vividness of his recollection, to delve into the compulsions that pushed Chris McCandless to pursue his unique path to his destiny.
The character Chris of Into the Wild audiobook, in his own way, was a towering figure. He was a smart kid, a college grad, who came from money. His parents were messed up, but really, whose parents aren’t? After college, instead of going to law school (don’t go to law school, by the way), he gave away $25,000, burned his credit cards, and set out to see the west. You can’t call Chris a poser, whatever else you want to label him. He, like everyone else, had dreams and demons, and he set out to fulfill his dreams and overcome his demons.
There’s something to be said about what he went through with his parents. Even so, the world compels us to be ourselves. He made his way ahead the best he could, defining himself along the way. Of course, the sadness is that the lessons he gained – about the importance of friends and family – came too late. Chris was one of those rare persons who wanted to know the world intimately and was slain by that same world in the course of uncovering those secrets. Perhaps his search was irrational or silly; perhaps he should have gotten a job, married, and retired to a secure desk to grow old behind. Or perhaps there is something foolish in us to believe that by being cautious, we can outlast the world.
Into the Wild audiobook‘s finest portions are not the last months in Alaska (which had to be reconstructed based on Chris’ journal and evidence found at the scene of his murder), but the recollections of individuals Chris encountered on his travels, with whom he had shared rides, worked, and stayed, and formed friendships. The book succeeds on many levels: it deals with nonfiction in a dramatic narrative manner, much like an adventure novel, while still being as true to the facts and realities found from Chris’s journal as feasible.
More audiobooks you may be interested:
