Narrative techniques

Narrative techniques function as the art of storytelling. In Into the Wild, Jon uses a unique technique to describe events, specifically transporting through time, and uses it to introduce or connect multiple ideas or thoughts. However, I discovered that at the very beginning when I was reading the first four chapters. He starts to speak about MacCandless and how he started his off-land life. Then he moves and starts to speak about the history of Alaskan terrain. After going through more chapters, I realized that Jon is using this method to create meaning through language and make it more comprehensive for the reader.


In addition, it makes you feel that in some occasions, the story precedes the events to add meaning to the current circumstances, which enabled him to provide us with a narrative summary about historical events in a couple of paragraphs, in this way, the reader does not get bored by reading long history lesson! But at the same time, making sure that all the important details are included in that couple of paragraphs.

THEMES

In the book into the wild, there is more then one theme, for example character development, companionship, the wanderer, freedom and loneliness.

I am going to write about some of these themes. One significant theme in into the wild is the deep and secret alienation that Chris felt for his parents. He was very angry at him, although his complaints are clear.

FREEDOM

McCandless was looking for a place that he wanted to live in it completely alone, in a world where the only law he felt the need to follow are those of nature, is to him ultmate freedome and he wanted to be away and freedom from other people's rules.

The allure of danger and high-risk activities is central to Into the Wild. Krakauer does not believe that this allure is significant to everyone, but it certainly is to a specific kind of young man -- one who is intense, passionate, driven and ambitious, but not satisfied with the opportunities or challenges society presents to him. These young men also always seem to have some kind of demon driving them, whether it is a troubled relationship with their fathers, as with McCandless, Krakauer, and John Waterman, or something else.

ACTION

Some information that advanced the plot in into the wild.

Throughout the many years he spends on the road, McCandless meets and affects many people, though never long enough have a lasting impact or be lured away from his wandering. Citing classic hermits and renouncers of society such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, McCandless decides to live in the wild, without the advents of human society. Living in a bus in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness with nothing more than some basic supplies, McCandless keeps a careful diary of his time, his thoughts, and his reasons for fleeing from society.

Eventually, he makes the decision to return to society, but is unfortunately forced to return to his bus by a swollen river. In his final days, McCandless is weakened by hunger and the cold. He spends a little more than 100 days in the wild, all the while being suspected of causing damage on local cabin owners’ land, and finding himself stuck in his situation. He writes often of his reasons, but eventually decides that nature is only a refuge for a short while, that true happiness can only be shared with others. In 1992, moose hunters in the Alaskan wild found McCandless’s body partially decomposed in his bus, the diaries and meager supplies still nearby. Initially, many thought he died from confusing potato seeds with a poison type of pea.

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb

Peter Robb, who lived in southern Italy for fifteen years, tells the story of Sicily, its opulent coasts, its stark interior, its extraordinary art and rich food, and its layers of culture from east and west. Sicily is also the home of the mafia and Midnight in Sicily shows the grip of organized crime on daily life in Italy’s south and the mafia’s ties to government in Rome, following the career of Giulio Andreotti - seven times prime minister of Italy and now appealing a conviction for conspiracy to murder. The book moves from art to crime to food with tremendous narrative verve and a mass of surprizing detail. Since its first publication in Australia in 1996, Midnight in Sicily has been published in many countries and languages.

CHARACTERIZATION

Information about Christopher McCandless

The purpose of Jon Krakauer’s book is to address the matter of young Christopher McCandless and his odd seclusion from society and a lifestyle that was all most people could ask for. Coming from a well-to-do background in the Washington D.C. area, McCandless always had privileges that few can claim. McCandless was just entering society, having graduated from Emory University, with more than $25,000 in savings and a family that loved him. The question of why he would completely break contact with all that he knew, give away everything he owned, and disappear to the Alaskan wilderness as a homeless man for two years drives Krakauer’s work.

Throughout the many years he spends on the road, McCandless meets and affects many people, though never long enough have a lasting impact or be lured away from his wandering. Citing classic hermits and renouncers of society such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, McCandless decides to live in the wild, without the advents of human society. Living in a bus in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness with nothing more than some basic supplies, McCandless keeps a careful diary of his time, his thoughts, and his reasons for fleeing from society.

MY OWN RESPONSE

According to the story that is talking about a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name wasChristopher Johnson ... Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter, that mean we should to ask our self why he did that?

I think Alex went to Alaska to challenge him self against an unforgiving wilderness, to be away from people and to live alone. He wanted to adventure and his life was taking risks, experiencing nature and discovering freedom.

I think Alex was searching for the true self. Also, in my opinion he was even particularly, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate.

Do you think it was worth it for McCandless to drive himself to this position?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn consists of 43 chapters and is told in the first person with Huck Finn telling the story. The book divides into three sections. The first sections has Huck living his Miss Watson and her sister in civilization. During the second section, Huck travels down the river with Jim. In the last section, Huck returns to civilization and lives with Tom in Uncle Silas’ farm. An organizational object in the book is the river which serves as a timeline for the book. (summarycentral.tripod.com)

The first section introduces Huck and his current life living with Miss Watson and Later with his father. This section ends were Huck fakes his death and flees to Jackson Island.
In the second section, Huck meets Jim at the island and starts down the river when they find out that Jim is being searched for. Huck runs from civilization and Jim runs from slavery. This section ends when both Jim and Huck make it to Uncle Silas’ farm.
The third sections takes place at the farm and continues to the end of the book.
Although the book divides itself into three sections, it does not divide itself to neatly into rising action, climax and conclusion since the book consists of several adventures with its own rising action, climax, and conclusion. It is difficult to label a single point as the climax.
The book clearly starts with the exposition where Huck introduced himself as a character from Tom Sawyer and the son of a town drunk. He lived with Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. However, Huck did not like the civilized life and would rather live an easy going life. Huck’s father finds out that Huck has some money and kidnaps him into a shack by the river. Pap beats Huck and Huck decides that he must escape. Huck fakes his death and flees to Jackson Island. On the island, he meets Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. This is the rising action.

When the find that there are men on the island searching for Jim, they decide to travel down the Mississippi river and up the Ohio river into the free states. On the river, they live an easy life as they travel during the night and hide during the day. Traveling down the river, the have many adventures, but they miss the turnoff into the Ohio River in the climax. Some of the adventures include the family feud between the Grangerford and Shephersons. Later they meet two con artists who call themselves the Duke and the King. They have several adventures with the Duke and the King. However, since they are low on money, the Duke and King sell Jim as a runaway slave to the Phelps. Huck goes to the Phelps and pretends he is Sid Sawyer, their nephew. Tom later comes and pretends he is Huck Finn. There, they try to rescue Jim but fails, only to have Tom tell them that Jim was already free. At the conclusion of the book, Huck decides to head off into new territory since he does not like the civilized society.

War and Peace, a Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.(

Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.

The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view.^[6] His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that arose in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.

The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.

Walden was published in 1854, seven years after Henry David Thoreau ended his stay in a small cabin near Walden Pond. During those years, Thoreau painstakingly revised and polished his manuscript, based on journals he kept while living at the pond. He hoped his book would establish him as the foremost spokesman for the American transcendentalist movement.(www.enotes.com)

In Walden, Thoreau condensed events of his twenty-six-month sojourn into one year, for literary purposes. He began and ended his narrative in spring. The eighteen chapters celebrate the unity of nature, humanity, and divinity—a central idea of transcendentalism—and portray Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond as an ideal model for enjoying that unity. In solitude, simplicity, and living close to nature, Thoreau had found what he believed to be a better life. In Walden, he enthusiastically shares his discoveries so that others, too, may abandon conventional ways and live more sanely and happily.

Thoreau begins by telling readers that he is writing to answer why he chose to live alone for more than two years in a small, simple cabin near Walden Pond. Much of the chapter is devoted to explaining that the way most people live, spending all their time and energy working to acquire luxuries, does not lead to human happiness and wellbeing. Thoreau writes that he prefers having time to walk in nature and to think much more than working long hours to pay for big houses, large tracts of land, herds of animals, or other property. He goes so far as to say that the ownership of such things is actually a disadvantage, as one who owns them must take care of them, while one who owns little has more freedom to do as he or she pleases. This is why Thoreau chose to live simply and cheaply in a house he built for himself: in simplicity and economy he found freedom. Finally, Thoreau describes how he built his house. He includes exact figures showing how much he spent on materials (twenty-eight dollars and twelve and one-half cents).