Into the Wild: Summary & Analysis | Chapter 13 | Study Guide (2024)

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What happened in chapter 13 of Into the Wild? ›

Chapter 13 of Into the Wild gives us a closer look at Chris's family after his death. We learn of how he and his sister, Carine, were very close, despite their differences in their monetary pursuits. The family wonders if the same fate would have occurred if Chris had been let to take the family dog with him.

December 13, 1991: Unexpectedly appears at Burres's campsite at The Slabs campground in Niland. January 1992: Meets Ronald Franz while hitchhiking near California's Salton Sea. February 1992: Dropped by Franz at the San Diego waterfront.

Carine and her husband were notified of Chris's death shortly after his body was discovered in the Sushana River bus. They traveled to Alaska to bring home Chris's ashes, in Carine's knapsack.

In the epilogue of Into the Wild, Krakauer describes traveling with Chris's parents to the site of the bus where he died. Billie and Walt have been devastated by their son's death, but they are both glad to see where he lived and died. They take in small reminders of his presence there and leave a plaque in his memory.

In Chapter 14, Krakauer shares his story of trying to solo climb the Devil's Thumb, a 6,000-foot isolated peak formed from diorite, an igneous rock, on the Stikine Ice Cap in Alaska.

Three reasons why his decisions to leave his family without saying a word were justified were that McCandless could make all his own decisions, nobody had a chance to tell him that he could not leave and it did not allow anyone to find out where he was going.

This is an interesting speculation. Krakauer also mentions that McCandless did not take a map with him because McCandless wanted to get lost in the wilderness and have a sense of really being deep in the bush. In reality Chris wasn't that deep in the bush and a map would have confirmed this.

Christopher McCandless weighed just 30 kilograms when he died alone in the Alaskan wilderness on August 18, 1992. Hunters discovered his severely emaciated body laying in his sleeping bag, inside the abandoned shell of Bus 142 where McCandless had lived for nearly four months.

However, after Chris's first summer trip out of high school, he learned that his father, who had always focused on proper behavior and class, had actually been hiding a secret. Back in El Segundo, Chris got the whole story. Walt McCandless had been married previously. Chris already knew that.

His half-brother, Sam McCandless, however, did still reside in Virginia. The Alaskan authorities contacted Sam, who was able to positively identify a photograph of the hiker's body as his brother Chris. The chapter ends with Sam describing how he had to drive out to Maryland and tell his parents the terrible news.

What secret is responsible for Chris's deteriorating relationship with his parents? ›

Chris had been born to his mother, Billie, while father Walt was still married to his first wife, Marcia. And two years after Chris was born, Walt McCandless fathered another child with Marcia. Discovering this duplicity infuriated McCandless.

Stranded in a desert after a flash flood, calling for help would have required McCandless to speak to police officers to explain why his registration was out of date, why he had out of state plates, and so forth, so he chooses instead to abandon the car.

Cheryl's boots teach her a valuable lesson as she sets off on this new leg of her hike. She is beginning to realize that even when she releases her stubborn nature and stops engaging in self-destructive patterns, things might not necessarily be easier—but she has to trek on anyway and make do with what she has.

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 into the bus for his final rest. In one of his last acts, Chris photographs himself. In the picture, Chris looks emaciated, but Krakauer believes he is at peace.

Chapter 12 of Into the Wild provides an overview of Chris's emotional development during his college career at Emory. Upon graduating from high school, he traveled around the country, eventually ending up in California, where he spent time with his father's first wife and their children.

In Chapter 4, McCandless leaves his car behind near Lake Mead, Nevada when a flood gets the engine wet. McCandless decides to burn all of his money and embraces his new life as a hitchhiker.