English Courses/Into the Wild Study GuideCourse
- AuthorAmelia Emery
Amelia Emery taught high school English Language Arts for 9 years and university-level writing courses for 3 years. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Secondary Education and English and a Master of Arts in Literature from Abilene Christian University. She is certified to teach English Language Arts and Reading and English as a Second Language in Texas for grades 6-12 .
View bio - InstructorLauren Boivin
Lauren has taught English at the university level and has a master's degree in literature.
View bio
Explore Chapter 14 of Into the Wild. Learn the summary, study an analysis, learn about Jon Krakauer's adventure in the Devil's Thumb of Alaska, and read the quotes.Updated: 11/21/2023
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Krakauer talk about himself in Chapter 14?
Krakauer felt a deep personal connection to Chris McCandless as he learned Chris's story. He tells his own story in Chapters 14-15 to illustrate that many people feel the need to prove themselves by overcoming some kind of hardship. Often this need for existential fulfillment takes the form of a wilderness experience.
Why did Jon Krakauer want to climb the Devils Thumb?
As a young man, Krakauer felt that mountain climbing was the activity that defined him and clarified his purpose in life. He was particularly interested in pursuing peaks that were remote, difficult, and unpopular. A part of him believed that conquering these climbs would offer a kind of spiritual or existential fulfillment.
What happened in Chapter 14 of Into the Wild?
In Chapter 14 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer departs from Chris McCandless's story to tell his own Alaskan wilderness experience. When he was 23, Krakauer decided to solo climb the Devil's Thumb on the Stikine Ice Cap.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 14 of Into the Wild
- Into the Wild Chapter 14 Summary
- Analysis of Chapter 14 of Into the Wild
- Quotes in Chapter 14 of Into the Wild
- Lesson Summary
Into the Wild is the story of Chris McCandless, who left behind his comfortable upper-class life near Washington, D.C., and traveled the country living simply and only working enough to buy what he needed. His goal was to travel to Alaska and spend a few months living off the land.
In Chapter 13 of ''Into the Wild'', the author, Jon Krakauer, recounts Carine's experience when she learned about her brother Chris's death and flew to Alaska to pick up his belongings and his ashes.
Jon Krakauer felt an intensely personal connection to Chris, as he lived a similar life as a younger man. In Chapter 14, Krakauer shares his story of trying to solo climb the Devil's Thumb, a 6,000-foot isolated peak formed from diorite, an igneous rock, on the Stikine Ice Cap in Alaska.
 |
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
- Lesson
- Quiz
- Course
In Chapter 14 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explains his personal connection to Chris McCandless. Krakauer says, "as a youth . . . I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody." He felt that male authority figures created in him a "confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please." As a young man, Krakauer focused on mountain climbing because he felt that it made the world "real" to him. He attributes his desire to climb the Devil's Thumb to adolescent existential imagination fueled by the writings of "Nietzsche, Kerouac, and Jon Menlove Edwards." Existentialism is a philosophy stating that individuals create their own identity through acts of will. Krakauer was aware that climbing the Thumb held multiple potentially fatal dangers, yet the bulletproof fervor of youth pressed him onward with the belief that succeeding in the climb would be life-altering.
When Krakauer made the decision to head to Alaska, he approached his boss at his construction job and quit on the spot. He only had $200 and a beat-up car, but he made his way to Alaska. After driving from Colorado to Gig Harbor, Washington, Krakauer earned passage on a ship by taking turns at the helm and tying up the fishing gear. He arrived in Petersburg, a small town on an island close to the Devil's Thumb.
In Petersburg, he met Kai Sandburn, a young woman who did not scoff at his desire to climb the Thumb. Instead, she offered to cook him dinner and let him sleep on her floor for the night. He enjoyed Kai's company but realized that his way of life and his upcoming expedition would deprive him of "real human connection."
Krakauer's money and supplies were slim, so he had to be creative with travel to the Thumb. He took a boat with tree planters to the mainland, then skied 30 miles across a glacier that was riddled with crevasses. To prevent falling to his death in a crevasse, Krakauer took two ten-foot aluminum curtain rods and attached them in an X formation on his back. He hoped that if he stepped through a sheet of snow, the curtain rods would catch him and keep him from falling.
Three days of travel brought him to an icefall, a labyrinth of sharp jags of ice and hidden cracks that was incredibly hazardous to cross. To make matters worse, a storm came up, creating whiteout conditions. He had no options except to continue moving forward. His aluminum cross frame did indeed save his life when he stepped through a sheet of snow and fell waist-deep into a hundred-foot-deep crevasse.
When he cleared the icefall and reached the Devil's Thumb, he pitched his tent and settled in. Expecting to camp for 3-4 weeks, he hired a pilot to fly over and drop in his supplies. Due to another storm, the drop was 4 days late, and he began to be seriously concerned about his survival. Thankfully, the pilot was able to drop the supplies.
The next day, the weather was beautiful for climbing, and Krakauer knew not to waste a good weather day in Alaska. After crossing deep snow for four hours, he was exhausted by the time he got to the Thumb. He found a section of the ice that he felt he could trust and started climbing with crampons and ice axes. When he reached about 700 feet, the thickness of the ice was reduced to two or three feet. At about 3700 feet, he ran out of ice. He swung the ice axe and hit diorite under just a couple of inches of ice. Despite trying to move to the left and right, he could not find ice to hold onto and began to panic. Reining in his fear, he climbed back down to safety.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Into the Wild is a romanticized biographical examination of the last few years of Chris McCandless's life. Despite the fact that this is a non-fiction book, Jon Krakauer places himself in Chris's story and examines adolescent existential quests to weave a captivating narrative of Chris's life and death.
- Jon Krakauer inserts his own experience into Chris McCandless's story.
Krakauer received both positive and negative criticism for including his own wilderness experience in Chapters 14 and 15. Some critics question Krakauer's motives for placing himself and his story of climbing the Devil's Thumb in Into the Wild. Since this is a story about Chris McCandless, they say Krakauer should keep his own experience out of it. Other readers believe that Krakauer became too obsessed with Chris's life, even to the point of superimposing his own thoughts onto Chris's motivations, misrepresenting his intentions.
The most favorable opinion is that Krakauer's personal connection allows him to share insights into Chris's behavior that are both sympathetic and critical. Krakauer's inclusion of climbing the Devil's Thumb helps to illustrate that the desire to challenge ourselves and seek out some hidden truth about life is common in everyone.
- Krakauer examines the tendency for young people to pursue existentialist quests of identity.
Krakauer believed that climbing the Devil's Thumb would somehow change his life. John Menlove Edwards, an author and climber, "climbed not for sport, but to find refuge from the inner torment that framed his existence." Krakauer, Chris, and many others believe that completing a journey or pilgrimage, especially a difficult one with hardships to overcome, will help them settle their inner demons and shape their identities. Unfortunately, Krakauer, Chris, and others find that their summit experience is not as transformative or long-lasting as they expect.
Jon Krakauer's Devil's Thumb in Alaska
Krakauer incorporates his story of solo climbing the Devil's Thumb in Alaska into Chris McCandless's story of living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness to illustrate the universality of the shared experience. Many people seek existential healing through wilderness experiences.
Some people criticize Chris, saying he was foolish and inexperienced, while others say that he was deliberately underprepared because he indented to die in the wilderness. Krakauer uses his deeply felt understanding of Chris's motivation to reveal another option: Chris had every intention of surviving his experiment and heading back out of the wilderness. He fell prey to a mistake that turned out to be fatal. Krakauer, too, realized his story could have ended on his Devil's Thumb quest. Falling off the Thumb or into a crevasse, running out of supplies, becoming lost, and freezing to death were all too real possible outcomes. Both Chris and Krakauer, as young men, had the heady confidence of youth on their side as they scratched their existential itches in the Alaskan wilderness.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Krakauer's writing combines factual recounting of events interspersed with imagery-packed emotionally-gripping descriptions of the scenes and experiences he encounters. The following quotations from Chapter 14 of Into the Wild exhibit this blend of fact and figurative language.
- "By fixing my sights on one summit after another, I managed to keep my bearings through some thick postadolescent fog. Climbing mattered. The danger bathed the world in a halogen glow that caused everything -- the sweep of the rock, the orange and yellow lichens, the texture of the clouds -- to stand out in brilliant relief. Life thrummed at a higher pitch. The world was made real."
Krakauer explains that he struggled with direction in his life as a young man. He credits his focus on mountain climbing with keeping him grounded as he matured. Like many young people, Krakauer was open to risk-taking behaviors that might help him explore his existence, identity, and purpose in the world.
- "Here, the glacier spills abruptly over the edge of a high plateau, dropping seaward through a gap between two mountains in a phantasmagoria of shattered ice. As I started at the tumult from a mile away, for the first time since leaving Colorado, I was truly afraid."
Krakauer's descriptions of the landscape around the Devil's Thumb reveal that climbing the peak is not the only significant threat he faces on this journey. In this example, he defines an icefall and, at the same time, imbues in it an air of magical foreboding which makes him acutely aware of the possibility of his death in pursuing this goal.
- "The frost feathers holding me up . . . were maybe five inches thick and had the structural integrity of stale cornbread. Below was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was balanced on a house of cards. The sour taste of panic rose in my throat. My eyesight blurred, I began to hyperventilate, my calves started to shake."
On the first good weather day, Krakauer attempts to climb the Devil's Thumb. He explains his progress in climbing just over halfway up the peak with facts about the ice he relied on. The moment the ice begins to fail him, he changes his narrative from facts to figurative language, comparing the ice to stale cornbread and his situation to a house of cards.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
In Chapter 14 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer inserts his personal story of climbing the Devil's Thumb in Alaska as a young man. He attributes his desire to climb obscure and dangerous mountains and Chris's desire to survive on his own in the wilderness to the existentialist need to develop an identity by overcoming hardships. The Devil's Thumb is a lonely diorite peak perched on the Stikine ice cap. Krakauer had been working as a carpenter in Colorado when he abruptly quit his job and headed north. Knowing he would face the possibility of falling into crevasses, he built an X-shaped frame from aluminum curtain rods that he hoped would span any opening in the ice he encountered. Upon arriving in Alaska, he met Kai Sandburn, a young woman who shared a meal with him and allowed him to sleep on her floor. He realized that due to his lifestyle and his upcoming climb, he was missing the connection of close relationships in his life.
Krakauer overcomes the obstacles in traveling to the Devil's Thumb by boating, skiing, and then hiking through an icefall in a blizzard. He faced the possibility of having no supplies due to a four-day-long storm. Finally, awakening to a clear weather day, he took immediate advantage of it and set out to climb the Devil's Thumb with ice axes and crampons. As he reached 3,700 feet of the 6000 feet of the peak, he ran into a potentially fatal problem. The ice on the rock face was too thin to hold his weight, and he was forced to climb back down.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Additional Info
Krakauer's Own Story
In Chapter 14 of Into the Wild, the book becomes autobiographical as writer Krakauer tells us about himself and his own personal affinity for protagonist Chris McCandless. We learn that Krakauer had issues with his own father similar to those McCandless had. Krakauer also possessed the same kind of philosophically-driven desire to break out, to explore.
This portion from ''Letter from a Man'' by John Menlove Edwards is found at the beginning of Chapter 14: ''I grew up exuberant in body but with a nervy, craving mind. It was wanting something more, something tangible. It sought for reality intensely, always as if it were not there...'' These words sum up succinctly Krakauer's youthful mindset, which he believes to be quite similar to that of Chris McCandless.
The Devils Thumb
Chris McCandless's big adventure was hiking into the Alaskan wilderness. For Krakauer, it was climbing a mountain called the Devils Thumb. Not only was he going to climb this formidable peak, he decided, but he was going to scale its north side--which had never been done--and he was going to do it alone.
''I was dimly aware that I might be getting in over my head,'' Krakauer tells us, ''But that only added to the scheme's appeal.'' His ''reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scattershot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzsche, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards.'' With all the thirst for adventure and the literary and philosophical underpinnings of that thirst, Krakauer sees a reflection of his youthful self in Chris McCandless's story. Perhaps this is why Krakauer defends McCandless so vehemently.
Krakauer's Journey
Krakauer didn't take long to execute his plans--he quit his job in Colorado (where he was working for $3.50 per hour as a carpenter) and, just like that, he was off for Alaska. ''I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was,'' Krakauer writes, ''and how good it felt.'' This sounds quite a bit like Chris, too!
Krakaur drives as far north as he can, finally abandoning his car and hitching the rest of the way on a salmon fishing boat. Arriving in Petersburg, Krakauer is invited home for dinner by a kind stranger named Kai Sandburn. As he enjoys her company that evening, Krakauer realizes that his belief that he didn't really need the company of other people was really just ''self deceit.'' This realization leaves him ''hollow and aching.''
The Ascent
Despite his hollowness, Krakauer sets out for the Devils Thumb according to plan. He uses a couple of sturdy curtain rods to fashion a kind of cross on his back--in hopes that this device would help to keep him from plummeting to the bottom of a crevasse as he trekked across the field of glaciers. It does, indeed, save him on at least one occasion. The ground he covers is treacherous--he often breaks through snow bridges, leaving legs or half his body dangling into crevasses that could kill him. Once he reaches the Thumb, things are no less life-threatening. He makes it about 300 feet up using the front points of his crampons and the picks of his axes on a sturdy flow of frozen meltwater. Crampons are spiky metal things you wear on your boots while ice climbing. They look like this:
 |
The First Defeat
Soon, however, the sturdy ice gives way to rime, which is ice made from fog and clouds that have frozen onto a surface. That's right--he was climbing up a sheer rock face on frozen clouds. After a while, though, even the rime is getting thin, and it has ''the structural integrity of stale corn bread.'' Panic threatens to take hold of Krakauer as he realizes ''below was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was balanced on a house of cards.'' the Devils Thumb had beaten him this time. ''The only place to go was down.'' This won't be his last attempt, however, as Krakauer displays the same sort of tenacity we see in Chris McCandless's wilderness wanderings.
Lesson Summary
In Chapter 14 of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer tells us a bit more about himself and the connection he feels with Chris McCandless. We learn that Krakauer could sympathize with Chris's family angst as he tells us his own relationship with his father was also a complicated one. Krakauer also discloses the same kind of lust for adventure that Chris seemed to have. Krakauer's great odyssey, however, was to climb the Devils Thumb in Alaska. He set out on his own, leaving his job as a carpenter in Colorado, to travel North. Arriving at last in Petersberg, Krakauer is provided with some hospitality from a woman named Kai Sandburn. Enjoying her company, he realizes how much he will miss the companionship of other people. This doesn't stop him, though, and he sets out with a crude cross made of curtain rods strapped to his back in order to prevent him from falling into one of the many crevasses he encounters. After finally reaching the Devils Thumb, Krakauer is defeated in his first ascent as the frozen meltwater gives way to rime--or frozen fog and cloud--which eventually becomes too thin to support his weight.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Register to view this lesson
Are you a student or a teacher?
Unlock Your Education
See for yourself why 30 million people use Study.com
Become a Study.com member and start learning now.
Become a Member
Already a member? Log In
Resources created by teachers for teachers
Over 30,000 video lessons& teaching resources‐allin one place.
Video lessons
Quizzes & Worksheets
Classroom Integration
Lesson Plans
I would definitely recommend Study.com to my colleagues. It’s like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. I feel like it’s a lifeline.
Jennifer B.
Teacher
Try it now
Back
