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Chris’s Map
Throughout his journey, McCandless carries many books with him and reads avidly, highlighting passages from Doctor Zhivago and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as well as encouraging the people he meets to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. McCandless takes the views espoused by these authors to heart and seeks to live them out through his itinerant lifestyle off the grid. These books embody Chris’s idealism and quest for wisdom.
Chris’s Books Quotes in Into the Wild
The Into the Wild quotes below all refer to the symbol of Chris’s Books. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
[Chris] was so enthralled by [Jack London’s] tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London’s romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness.
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Chapter 18
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HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.
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Chris’s Books Symbol Timeline in Into the Wild
The timeline below shows where the symbol Chris’s Books appears in Into the Wild. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3 – Carthage
...of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, inscribed with a directive to “Listen to Pierre,” the novel’s “questing, altruistic, and illegitimately born” protagonist. He continues to write to Wayne and identifies South...
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Chapter 5 - Bullhead City
Chris helps Jan sell secondhand books at the Slab’s flea market by recommending books and stories by his favorite author and...
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Chapter 16 - The Alaska Interior
...nothing else but his rifle, his backpack filled with rice, and a small collection of books.
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Chapter 18 - The Stampede Trail
Unable to walk, McCandless spends his last days reading books and pens a goodbye in his journal, thanking God for a happy life, before crawling...
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