Into the Wild’s Exploitation of the Bildungsroman
This writing dump is actually from this year. My class is on rhetoric, so it's a lot more boring IMO, but I'm bored and procrastinating. So here, some Jon Krakauer. I was just breaking out of 5-paragraph.
The literary genre of Bildungsroman is one in which the protagonist seeks self-discovery through experience in the world that eventually results in psychological and moral growth, specifically from youth to adulthood. However essentially, the genre is defined by the tension between self-integration and social integration. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, is a Bildungsroman that separates these two elements structurally. Christopher McCandless, an idealist who travels out to Alaska alone, sets himself completely off from human contact, providing a separation that Krakauer exploits to make a point about the tension between self-integration and social integration. Krakauer argues, against literary analyst’s perceptions of social integration as preceding self-integration, in favor of self-integration above social integration, and even for radical self-integration in isolation from social confounds.
The Bildungsroman was first named by philologist Karl Morgenstern, but was popularized by Wilhelm Dilthey in 1870, who draws the origin of the Bildungsroman to Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s novel, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. Into the Wild can certainly be called a Bildungsroman from this perspective. It certainly follows the development of McCandless on a journey from youth to adulthood. Krakauer argues throughout the book that McCandless’s journey to Alaska is a journey of idealism and self-discovery. McCandless’s manifesto calls his Alaskan journey “THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TO KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND VICTORIOUSLY CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION” (112). Certainly, he grows throughout the book, finding that his approach to happiness to include social interaction after all. It is also catalyzed, as in the archetype, by a feeling of distrust and resentment towards his father. McCandless pointedly relates their relationship to his adventure. “He brooded at length over what he perceived to be his father’s moral shortcomings, the hypocrisy of his parents’ lifestyle, the tyranny of their conditional love. Eventually, Chris rebelled—and when he finally did, it was with characteristic immoderation” (Krakauer 46).
However, it can be argued that McCandless’s death which prevents him from reaching adulthood and complete maturity disqualifies the book from the genre. To address this, Goethe’s other great work, The Sorrows of Young Werther, must be examined. Werther is considered to follow the archetype equally well, in fact it is considered the foundation of the Künstlerroman, a Bildungsroman about an artist’s development. Werther is composed of letters by a young artist named Werther who falls increasingly love with an engaged and then married woman. He decides that the only way to resolve the situation is for one of them to die and chooses to commit suicide. Certainly, Werther has not reached adulthood by the time of his death. In fact his reasoning is quite immature, and his ideals are not nearly as lofty of those of McCandless. Therefore Werther provides a clear precedent for the acceptance of Wild to the Bildungsroman genre.
Most importantly, Into the Wild follows what a Columbia English department paper claims is the essential element of the Bildungsroman: a tension between the priorities of self-integration and social integration. Dilthey himself calls to attention this element in Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, but claims that social integration is a prerequisite to self-integration. The unclaimed Columbia paper, claims instead that it is the tension of these priorities, found in Wilhelm, that characterizes the Bildungsroman. Goethe talks about Vollen as “desire and its fulfillment” (Columbia) and Sollen as “social obligation and its fulfillment” (Columbia). Krakauer, too, banks on and even argues that these two are wholly independent. It is exactly this tension that characterizes Krakauer’s presentation of McCandless’s adventure. Krakauer presents McCandless’s story as two parts. The first is his adventure in the continental West, in which he lives a nomadic but social existence, forming and breaking relationships with those he meets along the way. The second is his trip to Alaska, completely alone, to live off the land. McCandless’s purpose for isolation is partially exactly that tension: removing the variable of social integration, he is finally left with a condition in which to fully examine and fulfill himself.
Having established Into the Wild as Bildungsroman, there’s no doubt that Krakauer chooses to emphasize the Vollen, self-integration element of McCandless’s development. One needs to look no further than the title, “Into the Wild,” not “Into the West,” or “Out of Atlanta,” to see Krakauer’s emphasis on McCandless’s time in Alaska. There’s evidence that McCandless, too, felt the relative weight of his Alaskan journey. He called it his “great Alaskan odyssey” (33), and certainly considered his journeys in the continental West to be a preparation for his climactic trip to Alaska. He states in his manifesto, “AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE” (112). What, then, does Krakauer attempt to achieve with the nearly one-hundred pages describing McCandless’s nomadic adventure? McCandless does not wish to wholly forgo the Sollen, social integration element element of the Bildungsroman - to do so would be to stray too far from the base he builds on. Instead, Krakauer exploits McCandless’s complete isolation in Alaska as a tool to separate the two elements, like two groups of a scientific experiment. It is in these significant pages that Krakauer argues for critical evaluation of Dilthey’s assessment that social integration must necessarily precede self-integration. While Krakauer portrays McCandless in a glowing light, and certainly takes great care not to portray McCandless as a social misfit, he also shows McCandless as escaped from intimacy, and unable to form the close, permanent bonds that would ultimately denote social maturity.
Krakauer’s dual purpose in his portrayal of McCandless pre-Alaska is well summed up by his quote of a man who rented his trailer to him. “Nice guy, seemed like one, anyway. Had a lot of complexes sometimes, though” (30). The good kid sentiment is not served lightly. Acquaintance Jan Burres, too, says “he was a really good kid” (23), his manager says, “he was a nice kid and a good worker. Real dependable” (29), and his sister emphasizes, “he wasn’t antisocial— he always had friends, and everybody liked him” (74). However, having established McCandless’s competency, Krakauer makes sure not to portray McCandless’s journey as one of friends and learning. In fact, he expresses McCandless’s social shallowness through his journey in the West.
No relationship better sums up Krakauer’s portrayal of the impact of McCandless’s lack of availability than that with Ronald Franz. Franz, an 80-year-old man with no remaining family, develops a touching if a little shallow relationship with McCandless after giving him a ride. Franz’s son was killed by a drunk driver along with his wife, and, Krakauer says, his “paternal impulses were kindled anew” (36). At the end of their time together, Franz asks to adopt McCandless. Krakauer says that McCandless “dodged the question.” Krakauer’s portrayal of this relationship carefully illuminates McCandless as respectful, kind, but impossible to become really close to. As McCandless departs, Krakauer could make his goals no clearer than when he says, “[McCandless was] relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it. He had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family. He’d successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm’s length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he’d slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz’s life as well.” (39). Krakauer delivers perhaps the most essential summary of what he claims about McCandless in this powerful paragraph, but takes it to the final extreme. Not content with establishing McCandless’s personality, he makes a compelling case for its immaturity through the impact on Franz. After hearing about McCandless’s death, Krakauer quotes Franz as saying, “And then I went out into the desert and drank [a bottle of whiskey]. I wasn’t used to drinking, so it made me sick. Hoped it’d kill me, but it didn’t. Just made me real, real sick” (43), and concludes the chapter. With this sad description, Krakauer drives home his argument for self-integration in showing that failed social integration due to missing self-integration is not only useless, but utterly destructive.
In order to fully separate McCandless’s Vollen and Sollen development, Krakauer provides very little insight into McCandless’s philosophical musings and self-reflections before reaching Alaska. Despite having kept a journal written in the third person - itself something that surely Krakauer would have exploited had he written it in Alaska - and seemingly quite detailed, Krakauer includes but a few snapshots. There is little mention of McCandless’s reading, annotations and highlights. However once in Alaska, Krakauer reveals a cornucopia of insight through Krakauer’s reading material and, it is revealed, habit of annotation and highlighting. One highlight summarizes McCandless’s dedicated quest to self-fulfillment quite well. “No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles” (34), Krakauer quotes from Walden, carefully stating that it was with McCandless’s “remains” (34) in Alaska. In essence, the Henry David Thoreau quote puts well that style of self-fulfillment that McCandless pursues: the pursuit of his own intentions in the most radical extreme so as to better understand them and their value. In another epigraph, McCandless is cited as having highlighted Boris Pasternak, “As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected” (72). Here Krakauer emphasizes McCandless’s reflection on the self-isolation that he uses to explore and find himself.
Krakauer also points out McCandless’s development. The last book McCandless ever read was Doctor Zhivago. In the margin of the text, “And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness.... And this was most vexing of all” (129), McCandless wrote in uncharacteristic all capitals, “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED” (129). Krakauer makes sure to frame this as development. “It is tempting to regard this latter notation as further evidence that McCandless’s long, lonely sabbatical had changed him in some significant way. It can be interpreted to mean that he was ready, perhaps, to shed a little of the armor he wore around his heart, that upon returning to civilization, he intended to abandon the life of a solitary vagabond, stop running so hard from intimacy, and become a member of the human community” (129). It’s through these philosophical inlets to McCandless’s mind that we see his personality and development, and, in aggregate, his personal development and self-integration.
The Bildungsroman is ubiquitous in literature, and widely loved for clear reasons. The development from youth to adulthood is central to many people’s lives, even those who now live in adulthood. After all, social integration and self-integration are extremely personal and lasting effects that all people carry within them. Krakauer builds on this structure as a commonplace in order to condense his argument and make it more powerful. The reader at the conclusion of Into the Wild often feels that Krakauer has made a deliberate and explicit argument for the value of self-integration as exemplified by Chris, but a review of the text shows very little generalized argument for such a point. Instead, by building on and challenging the assumptions of the Bildungsroman, he is able to use the story itself as content and allow the template itself to produce the argument. Krakauer’s presentation has touched thousands of people - wilderness fanatics, youth, those who challenge social assumptions, people looking for purpose, and more - and changed a tragic story of a young man starving to death in Alaska to a story of development and true understanding of the self.