Chris McCandless is not your ordinary teen, he is an anti-capitalist with little respect for authority. As any other kid in the world, relationships with their parents are not always stable, but McCandless discovers a dark secret about his father that pushes him to the edge. With no respect left for his parents McCandless starts to question the aspects of the society he lives in and sees it’s not where he wants to be. McCandless, fuelled with hatred at his father feels he must escape this society.

With his final year of college almost over, McCandless plans to leave and distance himself from the cruelty of society leaving no trace of his whereabouts. Soon after the book changes its time line structure and explains a little more about who McCandless really is. The background information helps the reader piece together chris’s life. When McCandless’s parents lose contact from their son, the search for Chris McCandless begins. After several months on the road, Chris adopts a new name for himself, as ALEX SUPERTRAMP, master of his own destiny.

At this point of his journey, Krakauer uses his journalistic writing style to include stories of ordinary people who encountered McCandless on his journey across the western U.S. With this new type of writing style the book becomes a complex plot structure being in non chronological order. Each Chapter is a different event from his journey in Arizona, California, Texas, and South Dakota until he reaches his final destination, Alaska. You should also know that (due to the plot structure) Chris is pronounced deceased in the second Chapter. As you can see, the outcome of Chris McCandless is put in the first few chapters which throw off the conclusion. I found that the ending of this book was a bit deeper than having his death as the conclusion for the fact that Krakauer added McCandless’s journal entries to give us an insight of what McCandless was feeling at the time of his death.

Understanding this book is difficult because the time line is not in order. I feel as if Krakauer used this type of writing style to do something different or maybe he wrote it from his own journalistic perspective. Either way the books story line is good, but the structure is confusing if you’re not use to non chronological order. Readers may lose interest due to the unconventional plot structure.