After reading chapter one of "Into the Wild" and realizing he seemed to be lacking in supplies for his adventure into the Alaskan bush, I came to the conclusion that he thought he could survive off the land with the very minimum. He must have known that because he was very intelligent and knew what he had to do and bring to survive. He wasn't some random person who as Jim Gallien would say in chapter one would simply decide to go to Alaska after flipping through a magazine thinking it wouldn't be too hard. Chris McCandless knew what he was up against, he just didn't have best supplies but he was definitely mentally prepared for the challenges ahead. It makes sense considering there was no way for him to afford proper equipment since he gave away his trust fund to charity and burned the rest. i don't think he wanted to stay in Alaska forever, he must've wanted to cone back civilization eventually because if het did plan to "exist simply" why did he plan to visit Wayne Westerberg when he got out of jail.
I think Jon Krakauer's decision to start the story off at the end and then piece the story together with different events leading up to his death was a very creative approach. I like how it is different and it makes me want to know what events made led him to die in a bus in the middle of the Alaskan bush. I think Krakauer's purpose to write Into the Wild in this fashion was to let the reader know in the very beginning what happened and to tell them piece by piece how he got to that point and to keep the readers on their toes.
The S.O.S note McCandless writes in the beginning of the book was, I thought, very eerie because of how desperate he was. In the beginning he seemed very confident, calm, and collected and now here he is injured and in desperate need for help. He also decided to use his real name Chris McCandless instead of Alexander Supertramp. I was wondering if mentally unstable because I thought he might have forgotten all about that name or just regretted it in general. It also said "No joke" which i thought was a but strange because who would be joking about that in the middle of the ALaskan wilderness where many people die?
