Many classic accounts regarding "man against nature" adventures liken
             these adventures to conquest. A mountain, for example, is a force to be
             mastered or conquered. Reaching the summit is akin to a victory over the
             mountain. People who forge trails into the wilderness refer to "taming"
             the wilds. Through these terms, nature is presented as entirely subject
             to human will, as targets to be assaulted and subdued.
             For Jon Krakauer, however, nature is itself is possesses an archetypal
             power. Whether mountains or wilderness, Krakauer writes of nature with an
             imbued collective and spiritual energy. These places are physical
             reminders of a transcendent world to which most humans aspire.
             This paper examines Krakauer's portrayal of nature in Into the Wild
             and Into Thin Air. The first part of this paper compares how the author
             portrays nature as spiritual forces that attract seekers, not conquerors.
             The second part of the paper focuses on how nature asserts its own
             dominance in the face of human arrogance and human error. In the
             conclusion, the paper emphasizes Krakauer's argument, that nature is a
             force, from which people could seek solace or strength. However, when
             arrogance, incompetence or bad luck come into play, then the same nature
             that nurtures the soul could just as easily spawn tragedy.
             In Into the Wild, Krakauer tells the story of Chris McCandless,
             speculating on why the wealthy young college graduate and devotee of Leo
             Tolstoy, Jack London and Henry David Thoreau left his promising life to go
             into forbidding Alaskan territory. For Krakauer, McCandless is not an
             anti-social misfit. Instead, the young vagabond is guided by an earnest
             asceticism, one that is impossible to sustain in the crowded modern world,
             which is replete with distractions. To mirror his inner journey,
             McCandless "yearned to find a blank spot on the map." The closest spot he
             ...