Into the Wild

Into the Wild

Write a three page essay on Into the Wild (11 or 12 font).

In the last paragraph of the author's note, Jon Krakauer writes: "Some readers admired the boy immensely for his courage and noble ideas; others fulminated that he was a reckless idiot, a wacko, a narcissist who perished out of arrogance and stupidity. . . ."

What are your convictions about Chris McCandless and why?

Considerations in writing your essay:

--Literary anecdote as an opening. Using Thoreau, Tolstoy, Jack London, or some other author, do as George Orwell does in the opening of his discussion of Jack London in "The Love of Life and Other stories by Jack London," and thus engage your reader's interest and set up your thesis.

--Do you have any personal experience that you can use as evidence to support you own convictions about McCandless?

-- Secondary Sources: include at least one secondary source as evidence in your argument. Use MLA format and cite sources correctly.

--Concessions and anticipating opposition to what you say: Regardless of your convictions about McCandless, somewhere near the end of the body of your essay, carefully anticipate and then intellectually consider the rationale of alternative perspective that may directly challenge your thesis. Show the reader--at some point--that you have considered other points of view. Be careful to maintain your own perspective, however, and persuade the reader that it is unreasonable to give too much credence to these alternative perspecitves. Demostrate the intellectual traits of critical thinking.

Criteria for evaluation: this is an ill-structured problem with no clear right answer. Therefore I will be evaluating the quality of your argument.

I will ask myself the following questions when grading your essay:

1. Does the paper have a thesis. I am primarily looking for writing that is much more than a report. Does the student offer a perspective or is the student just giving information? (commonly referred to as a "data dump)
2. Does the perspective address an appropriate question or problem?
3. Is the paper free from long stretches of quotations and summaries that exist only for their own sakes and remain unanalyzed?
4. Can the writer produce complete sentences?
5. Is the paper free from basic grammatical errors?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no," I give the paper some kind of "C." If the answer to most of the questions is "no," its grade will be even lower. For papers which have emerged unscathed thus far, I add the following questions.

6. How thoughtful is the paper? Does it show real originality?
7. How adequate is the thesis? Does it respond to its question or problem in a full and interesting way? Does it have an appropriate degree of complexity.
8. How well organized is the paper? Does it stick to the point? Does every paragraph contain a clear topic sentence? If not, is some other kind of organizing principle at work? Are the transitions well made? Does it have a real conclusion, not simply a stopping place?
9. Is the style efficient, not wordy or unclear?
10. Above all, can I hear a lively intelligent interesting human voice speaking to me (or to an audience) as I read the paper?

Depending on the answers to such questions, I give the paper some kind of A or some kind of B.