Arrogance, Innocence, and Ignorance Theme Analysis

When news of McCandless's death of apparent starvation breaks, native Alaskans ridicule him, assuming that Chris's lack of preparation for the frontier indicates the young man's incompetence, arrogance, stupidity, narcissism, and fundamental misunderstanding of the wild. Yet Krakauer questions whether McCandless's death is just another instance of a young man getting in over his head and suffering the consequences. In this way, Into the Wild is not just a biography of McCandless's "brief and confounding life," but also an inquiry into McCandless's death, much like the investigations that drive mystery novels, or crime dramas. Like a sleuth, the book circles around the question of "how and why did Chris McCandless die?"

For Krakauer the answer lies within McCandless's character—his arrogance—as well as his lack of experience—his innocence and ignorance. Though Krakauer concedes that McCandless did possess a certain degree of arrogance in venturing into the woods underprepared and ill-equipped, he characterizes this incautiousness as stemming from McCandless's overestimation of his ability to survive off the land alone, rather than a haughty disregard of nature's might and mercurial ways. Krakauer attributes McCandless's death to "one or two seemingly insignificant blunders"— his inability to circumvent a system of dangerous rapids on the Stampede Trail and mistakenly eating potato seeds laced with a poisonous mold. Both are honest mistakes made on sound judgment. McCandless would have risked life and limb if he tried to ford the river's powerful floodwaters on his own. McCandless also ate the potato seeds, based on the advice of an authoritative edible plant guide, which left out some little known, yet important information about swainosine that could have saved McCandless's life.

Instead of indicting McCandless of unforgivable hubris, Krakauer characterizes McCandless as the victim of his own ignorance and innocence, an inexperienced young man whose death resulted—in part—from his severe naivetŽ, rather than any sort of extreme arrogance. In doing so, Krakauer uncovers the tragedy of McCandless's death—in pursuing self-knowledge and experience, he fell victim to his lack of both. Krakauer thus reveals the paradox underlying all ventures of self-discovery—though motivated by a thirst for knowledge and experience such journeys are inevitably underwritten by a lack of both.