Reality of the Remote Wilderness―Krakauer’s Into the Wild and the Inner Desert

In Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction writing,Into the Wild(1996),away from the early 1990s’American society filled with products and information,young McCandless headed for the Alaskan Wilderness which was believed as the last frontier.This remote wilderness far beyond several designated wilderness areas in the American West was a destination of his spiritual journey.The image of the wilderness overlaps with the desert in the fourth-century hagiographic literature in terms of solitude,pure and sacred.Although the image of the wilderness is an illusion,harsh experience quite different from daily routine give McCandless a sense of reality.If his purpose of going to wildernesses was searching for“authentic self”through“bodily feelings”(Wang,361),the remote wilderness would be reckoned to have“existential authenticity”(Wang,358)which makes him feel reality.However,when the wilderness experience inspired McCandless to go back home,a sense of reality shifted from the remote wilderness to society.Into the Wild is probably not literature to praise desert solitude,rather,Krakauer focuses on the relative self among people.