• Get out your copy of the Author’s Note from
Friday and respond to the following journal
prompt quietly.
• Journal:
What questions do you have about the Author’s
Note, the story, or the author? Write at least two!
Then, write a reflection of the Author’s Note.
Make a connection to it, write an analysis of it,
etc.
• I can draw conclusions about the author’s
purpose, basic beliefs and perspectives.
(Author’s Note and introduction)
• I can evaluate how vocabulary contributes to a
text’s presentation. (Vocabulary)
By Jon Krakauer
• Into the Wild is a 1996 non-fiction book written
by Jon Krakauer. It is an expansion of Krakauer's
9,000-word article on Christopher McCandless
titled "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in
the January 1993 issue of Outside.
• The book was adapted to film in 2007, directed
by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as
McCandless.
• Jon Krakauer is an American
writer and mountaineer,
primarily known for his
writings about the outdoors,
especially mountain-climbing.
• He is the author of best-selling
non-fiction books—Into the
Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the
Banner of Heaven, and Where
Men Win Glory: The Odyssey
of Pat Tillman—as well as
numerous magazine articles.
• We know so much about Chris’s journey
because Jon Krakauer had access to the journal
Chris kept while he was traveling. Krakauer also
had access to the letters Chris wrote to people
he met along the way.
• In his journal Chris wrote
updates in both first and
third person.
• First person: “I am delighted to be at school
today.”
• Third person: “She is delighted to be at school
today.”
• First person: “I am about to read chapter one
from this awesome book.”
• Third person: “Ms. Nye is about to read chapter
one from this awesome book.”
“A very fateful day.”
After traveling some distance south, he beached the canoe on a
sandbar far from shore to observe the powerful tides. An hour later
violent gusts started blowing down from the desert, and the wind and
tidal rips conspired to carry him out to sea. The water by this time was
a chaos of whitecaps that threatened to swamp and capsize his tiny
craft. The wind increased to gale force. The whitecaps grew into high,
breaking waves. “In great frustration,” the journal reads, “he screams
and beats canoe with oar. The oar breaks. Alex has one spare oar.
He calms himself. If loses second oar is dead. Finally through
extreme effort and much cursing he manages to beach canoe on
jetty and collapses exhausted on sand at sundown. This incident led
Alexander to decide to abandon canoe and return north.”
• Krakauer uses elevated vocabulary in this
novel. For example, he uses the word
“contumacious” instead of “rebellious.” Why
would an author do that?
• How would a reader’s relationship to a
story change if the vocabulary was
simpler?
• Vocabulary words for this week coming next!
For each of the following words, write the word, its definition, and copy the
sentence from the book where the word appears.
1. Congenial (5)—friendly
2. Escarpments (10)—a steep slope
3. Antimony (10)—a metallic element
4. Anomaly (11)—glitch, inconsistency
5. Contumacious (11)—rebellious
6. Visage (16)—face
7. Amiable (16)—good-natured
8. Convivial (18)—sociable
9. Plebeian (18)—crude, common
10.Mien (18)—appearance
11.Onerous (22)—troublesome