Into the Wild

Chapter 1

  1. Who drove Chris to DenaliNational Park so that he could start his journey down the Stampede Trail in Alaska?
  2. What name is Chris using?
  3. How much food is Chris carrying with him?
  1. What items does the driver give him before they part ways?

Chapter 2

  1. What served as “a backcountry shelter to hunters and trappers”?
  1. What do the “guy and girl from Anchorage” find taped to the door?
  1. How much did Chris’s remains weigh?

Chapter 3

  1. How do Chris and Westerberg meet?
  1. Where was Chris raised?
  1. Who did Walt McCandless work for in the 1960’s before going into business for himself?
  1. Who is Carine?
  1. What is OXFAM?
  1. How is the end of chapter 3 like Thoreau’s experience?
  1. What is Chris going by (his name) at the end of chapter 3?

Chapter 4

  1. What did Alex (Chris) abandon at the beginning of chapter 4?
  1. Which Thoreau essay is mentioned early in chapter 4?
  1. What did Alex bury that he thought he may one day want to recover?
  1. What is Alex ticketed for in Willow Creek, California?
  1. Alex gets lost in the canals…where does he hope they lead?
  1. How does Alex feel about the Mexicans he encounters?
  1. How does Alex finally get to El Golfo de Santa Clara?
  1. What is his technique for not having his money stolen (what does he do with it)?
  1. Where does he return on February 24th and what does he find/uncover there?

Chapter 5

  1. What is Alex/Chris’s job in Bullhead (oddly he uses his real name for this job)?
  1. What did the assistant manager notice was one of his quirks?
  1. Who falls in love with Alex?
  1. What musical instrument does Alex play in chapter 5?

Chapter 6

  1. Who is the quote from at the beginning of Chapter 6?
  1. Who does Krakauer receive a letter from on January 4, 1993?
  1. Who gives Alex a ride to the Oh-My-God Hot Springs?
  1. How did Ronald Franz’s wife and child die?
  1. What is Alex’s new mode of transportation in ch. 6 (not Franz’s truck)?
  1. What advice does Alex give Ron in his letter?
  1. Does Ron take his advice?
  1. What religious steps does Ronald Franz take after Alex/Chris’s death?

Chapter 7

  1. What has Alex done with the microwave that is causing the horrible odor?
  1. Who does Alex have dinner with two nights before leaving for Alaska?
  1. What instrument does Alex play at the bar?
  1. Finish this line: I want you to know that you are a great man. I now walk______.

Chapter 8

  1. What is Gene Rosellini’s experiment?
  1. Did Waterman win his school board election?
  1. What did the note at the Mountain House read after Waterman’s death?
  1. Why was McCunn not saved from the mountain?

Chapter 9

  1. When and Where was Everett Ruess born?
  1. Everett was “…chanting his barbaric adolescent ______into the teeth of the world.”
  1. For six days I‘ve been suffering from a semi-annual______case.
  1. What does the word “Nemo” mean in Latin?
  1. Why did Everett’s father think he used the name Nemo (where did it come from)?
  1. Why were the monks in Iceland, “drawn west past the edge of the known world” toward Greenland?

Chapter 10

  1. Who is Jim Gallien?
  1. What is Alex/Chris’s social security number?
  1. Who first ID’s Chris after his death and has to tell Walt and Billie?

Chapter 11

  1. Where did Walt grow up?
  1. What did Walt buy Billie to help soothe the newborn baby?
  1. What strange thing did Chris do when he was 2?
  1. Why did Chris get an F in Physics?
  1. Why did Carine say that Chris quit playing the French horn?
  1. By the time he was in his teens he was one of the top______in the region.
  1. How did Chris make money as an 8 year old child?

Chapter 12

  1. Describe Chris when he returns from his first cross-country trip 2 days before the fall term at Emory.
  1. What pizza chain did Chris work for?
  1. What did Chris find out about his father and his father’s previous marriage?
  1. Where did Chris go in the spring of 1989 after classes and Emory ended?
  1. When does Billie think she heard Chris calling for help?

Chapter 13

  1. Who is Buckley?
  1. Who is Max
  1. What does Carine wonder about Buck?
  1. Who gives Carine the news about Chris?
  1. Where do they stop on the way to Walt and Billie’s?
  1. Less than twenty-four hours after landing in Fairbanks, Carine and Sam flew on to Anchorage, where Chris’s body had been______following the autopsy at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory.

Chapter 14

  1. What was the author of this book obsessed with from the time he was seventeen until his late twenties?
  1. What does Krakauer plan to climb?
  1. What does he almost hit while steering the boat?
  1. What did he buy at the hardware store?
  1. What is he waiting for on May 6th and 10th?
  1. A trancelike state settles over you efforts; the climb becomes a ______.

Chapter 15

  1. Why is there a fire in the tent?
  1. What troubled him most about the tent?
  1. What were some typical gifts from the author’s father?
  1. The author’s father, “deduced that he was suffering from a newly identified ailment known as______.
  1. What does the author hear someone say in his dream?
  1. Does he make it to the top of Devils Thumb?
  1. What does the word “Hubris” mean (p. 155)?
  1. Doe the author believe that McCandless wanted to die?

Chapter 16

  1. Chris snaps a shot of a sign that reads Fairbanks ______miles.
  1. Where is Gaylord Stuckey from?
  1. How far does he agree to take Alex?
  1. Where do Stuckey and McCandless arrive on April 25?
  1. What does Stuckey beg and plead that Alex do?
  1. What does he find in the classified ads?
  1. Who drops him off at the Stampede Trail?
  1. Where had he reached by his second day out?
  1. What does it mean by “he was crossing his Ribicon”?
  1. What does he call the day he finds the Bus?
  1. After traveling North and West where does he decide to make his base camp?
  1. What is his biggest prize of all on June 9th?
  1. What is one of the greatest tragedies of his life?
  1. What does he read that has a chapter entitled “Higher Law”?
  1. What is it that is a “disaster” and makes him “lonely” and “scared”?
  1. What does he decide to do at the end of the chapter?

Chapter 17

  1. Where is the author going as chapter 17 begins?
  1. What does Krakauer have that McCandless did not?
  1. Explain how the basket could have been used by McCandless had he known it was there.
  1. What did Krakauer’s crew not bring that could prove handy if they encounter a Grizzley
  1. What is he happy that he brought that McCandless did not (p. 176)?
  1. What is scattered around the base camp near the bus?
  1. What do some experts think McCandless misidentified and use as proof that he was incompetent?
  1. What did Chris make with a strip of blanket?
  1. What was Sir John Franklin known as? Why?
  1. Why does the author say was McCandless destine to fail…the opposite of John Franklin?
  1. What are most of his journals about?
  1. Some have suggested that “like John Waterman, he was small in stature and may have suffered from a ‘______’”
  1. Write the quote from Everett Ruess’s father.
  1. Who sleeps in the bus as the chapter ends?

Chapter 18

  1. What book had he just finished in late July?
  1. What did he note about happiness?
  1. What did he write in his journal on July 30th?
  1. Why is the first potato seed theory not plausible?
  1. What does Krakauer believe was the agent of his demise?
  1. He finally concludes it was not the seeds of the wild potato that had done McCandless in, it was the______.
  1. McCandless is proud to reach “Day _____! Made it!”
  1. Who does Forsberg suspect trashed the cabins nearby?
  1. Many Alaskans have wondered “Why…didn’t McCandless start a ______?”
  1. What is one of his last acts?

Epilogue

  1. Where are they going at the beginning of the epilogue? Who is going?
  1. What does Billie say the area reminds her of?
  1. What does she notice about a spoon?
  1. Why does she think he must have been brave at the end?