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Secondary Works

http://www.christophermccandless.info/Ronald-Hamilton/ronald-hamilton-intothewild1.html

The author talks about how he heard of Chris McCandless story, and how he read the books to have a more extensive amount of knowledge on Chris and the story. This article is also somewhat similar to the previous two secondary sources I’ve given, but it is written by someone else. It goes into the controversial topic of how he died and how it can be proven or not proven to the specific way to which he died.  It talks specifically about the seeds and plants that lead to the death of McCandless, and how they figured out that the seeds may have played a role. 

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Secondary Works

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chris-mccandless-died-update

This link is to an extension of the article from my last secondary works post. This article is also written by the author of Into the Wild, and it extends by doing more research on the previously mentioned “toxic” seeds. He goes through more extensive research, and he gives details on those tests and the people he contacted to do so. In the end, he comes to the same conclusion, the seeds can be poisonous and he believes that is what killed him. 

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Secondary Works

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-chris-mccandless-died

This article is written by the author of Into the Wild, he explains the way in which he believes Chris died, and goes into detail in testing the theories and reading other articles to truly figure it out. The entirety of the article surrounds the topic of how Chris died.  He does experiments with the supposedly “toxic” seeds that killed him by “weakening” him. At first, he theorized that the seeds had become a daily part of his diet due to lack of other food sources, and ultimately lead to his death. However, there is a lot of controversy on if the seeds he consumed were toxic or not. Many people said that he would have been able to differentiate this deadly seed from a nontoxic source of food. In the end, Krakauer does come to the conclusion that he believes Chris died from eating these seeds. 

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Secondary Works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

When doing more research on Christopher McCandless, I came across the Wikipedia site for him. This gives you information about his early life, travels, death, legacy, and other references. I do realize in the past Wikipedia has been known to give out some false information. But after reading the book, and knowing a decently substantial amount of information about him, the site goes into detail about his childhood, that you just wouldn’t get if you had only read the book. It also gives you links to other references, like people or places that it mentions, which could produce more secondary sources. 

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Secondary Works

The main character of Into the Wild is Chris McCandless. Chris McCandless is the real name of the person who experienced these things. There is another book written about him called Back to the Wild. This book is written by Mary Ellen Barnes, as well as Christopher McCandless. The main source of information in this book is from his journal and things detectives and reporters have found in the places he’s been. 

http://backtothewildbook.com/home-2/

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Secondary Works

One of my secondary sources is the “Into the Wild” movie. The book was written in 1996 and the movie was made in 2007, directed by Sean Penn, the movie is a very accurate portrayal of the book. It goes through a decent amount of the information given in the book, however as I watched I found myself wondering where certain details and even people were. 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/

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Corrupt

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Reading the Primary Work

Finishing the book for the second time, still gave me the same feeling it did the first time. When you see that he died, and how all the people whose lives he affected are hurting, it breaks your heart. The end of the book just explains the end of his life, facts about that/his trip, and how people move on with their lives.

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Reading the Primary Work

To relate back to my last post, and the connections he forms, you also form a connection with him as you progress through the book. You see what he goes through to get from place to place, to get food, or a shelter. In the end, you’re rooting for him to live. In the end, reading the final moments of his life is a bittersweet moment. You realize he lived his life how he wanted to, and that was good. But he’s dying, and after you’ve “experienced” it with him, you want him to live.

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Reading the Primary Work

As you get further into the book, and you see the friendships he creates, it makes you think that maybe that this is him, living how he’s supposed to, with the people it’s supposed to be with. He creates some very close bonds with people he meets in the different places he goes. A lot of these people end of heartbroken when he leaves, or when they find out that he died. Many people throughout the book say that he is “one of a kind” and that they will “forever be changed because of him”. He made such an impact on their lives, and then to just disappear, it hurt them. 

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Reading the Primary Work

When reading this book, I got a “weird” feeling. You sense his need to get out of everywhere he goes, and I think that a lot of high school relate to that. He felt that because he always did so well in school, there was too much expected of him. So rather than talking to anyone, he decided to just leave. The route that he took was not a wise choice, but it’s what he wanted to do with his life. And if he could do that, and live out his dream, that should be respected. 

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Reading the Primary Work

As I started reading, I found myself interested in the book, the same way I had been when I read it the first time. Since I had already read it, I found myself kind of skimming over some of the less detailed, more random parts of the first few chapters.

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Reading the Primary Work

I did reread the book for this research paper, I read this book in 8th grade, so I couldn’t remember all the details necessary for the paper. I was excited going into the book because I remembered how good the book was.

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Picking the primary work 

When choosing one of the abstract topics, it was a no brainer for me to pick “accepting death”. In the end of the book, Christopher accepts that he is dying, and he just lays in the bus. He does write a note asking for help, but after a certain amount of time, he realizes no one is coming and accepts his death.

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Picking the primary work

I picked Into the Wild because when I was researching nonfiction books, Into the Wild came up. I specifically chose this book because I already had the book, and had previously read it.

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Modest Proposal Quick Write

Modest Proposal is political because of the topics he discusses and the way in which he talks about them. He talks about a few very controversial topics, like homelessness and poverty, whilst still having it be a somewhat light essay. You can sense the sarcasm within the serious issues. Rich people have more power while poor people are left behind, which is a political topic that is debated in our everyday politics. I believe this is political because he talks about real life problems that have importance to them. 

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Porto, 11th October, 2017