Lesson Plan: Getting to Know Into the Wild

AP English -

Please note that the accompanying critical issues file is from my home state and local school (Hunterdon Central High School) in Flemington, New Jersey. I love the material because it includes a list of defined vocabulary, and it provides excellent critical thought materials. I adapt all material to my own needs, so this is my adaptation.

Objectives: The students will I. Write responses to support important ideas and viewpoints. II. Write a brief reflective composition: explore the significance of personal experiences, events conditions or concern by using rhetorical strategies

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Think about an experience you have had when you were alone and made some decisions which could have lead to disaster. What mistaken calculation did you make and what was the result? If you recognized your error, what did you do to correct your course that led to a satisfactory conclusion?

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Sport reading: Looking at the text—what are some of the elements of the text: How many chapters, what are the titles, what is said in the prefaces before the chapters begin, what is the length, are there any other elements to help readers understand the text---a glossary, maps, photos, references, etc? Who is the author? What other works has he written?

Most students and many readers of any age do not read the preface or author’s notes. Failing to do this means that readers often miss the author’s purpose or insight into how and why the text was written.

Examples (Modeling): Think Aloud Reading –The teacher reads with the class the beginning of the “author’s note.” As the teacher reads he/she notes that McCandless’ motives may be in paragraph 3, themes are introduced in paragraph 4, and the author admits he is not an impartial observer. (If students have read “Into Thin Air” which is in some textbooks (Holt, 4th edition Elements of Literature, what do they know about Krakauer and his own experiences). If not, the teacher might want to suggest that Krakauer has experiences his own thrill seeking adventure and explain a bit about his climb on Mt. Everest which created the experiences that he recorded in Into the Air, another non-fiction best seller. Guide students to understand that the complexity of McCandless is noted in the final paragraph.

Check for Understanding: Have students use the list that follows to write some questions or that the author should explore: courage/nobleness, idealist/spiritual, recklessness/foolishness, mental illness/sanity/insanity, conceitedness/narcissism, stupidity/ignorance, and arrogance/overconfidence

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Allow students to answer: In what way does Krakauer sound as if he writing his own story?

Introduce Vocabulary: Two ideas: Concept vocabulary (a practice I learned from CSU’s ERWC) A concept dictionary is structured around key concepts and the entries to a particular page include a rationale for why the word is grouped in that concept’s vocabulary.

Concepts can be the issues from the words in the check for understanding, or they can be new criticism related such as setting, characterization direct/indirect, etc. Encounter vocabulary: An encounter dictionary examines words that are infrequently encountered, but have added greater significance to the story than a synonymous word might add. RUBICON on page 163. What is the historical significance of this word and why did the author choose this instead of saying “point of no return?” Rubicon is a river in Italy. Caesar had been banished from Italy. Here at the river’s edge, he and his followers must make a choice of turning around or continuing to cross the Rubicon. After crossing the Rubicon, Caesar enters Rome and disperses the Senate. The government was changed from a republic to a military empire.

I use encounter vocabulary but this is from “Critical Issues – Into the Wild” monomania (120) - obsessed with one idea sanctimonious (122) - self- righteous choler (122) - anger sullen (123) - brooding, angry idiosyncratic (123) - distinctive, individual castigated (123) - punish extemporaneous (124) - impromptu gloaming (161) - dusk Rubicon (163) - point of no return aesthetic (163) - appreciates beauty in nature perambulation (164) - patrol taiga (164) - subarctic forest reverie (164) - dream obliquely (123) - indirectly

Homework (Independent Practice): Using what we have read together, write a paragraph containing at least four predictions regarding the events that we will read about. READ chapters 1 and 2.

Enhancement: Where is Emory University? For what is it known? What is authorial presence? Who is Narcissus? What does it mean to be a narcissist? Create a population density map of Alaska.

Use only if you don’t mind spoilers! Students can read the original article that led to the book at http://outside.away.com/outside/features/1993/1993_into_the_wild_1.html

Reflective Evaluation: AP English -

Lesson Plan: The Beginning and the End

Objectives: The students will I. Analyze both the features and the rhetorical devices of text and the clarity of meaning affected by patterns of organization. II. Analyze the way in which the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on life & use text support the assertion. III. Analyze the ways in which irony, TONE, MOOD, the author’s style, and the sound of language achieve specific rhetorical or esthetic purposes or both.

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): We will read a few predictions from the homework by allowing students to share…usually students what they believed caused the death of McCandless; sometimes, one or two are brave enough to tell what they believed cause him to go “batty” “nuts-zo” etc.

NOTE: A MAP BEGINS CHAPTER 4. Annotating text – In addition to annotating text the traditional way, for example using Mortimer Adler’s ideas from “How to Mark a Book,” I also use visual graphics to help students put into perspective the journey and how it unfolds. I put up a large map of the United States and one of Alaska and a paper doll in hiker outfit. We move the hiker. For each segment of the story, we are drawing the journey of McCandless across our nation. Student Activity: Break students into groups and give each group a set of maps; give each group a particular assignment to follow certain details in the story: people McCandless encounters, mistakes McCandless makes along the way, successes McCandless experiences, knowledge about himself, knowledge about others, changes in his personality, etc.

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Structure of the Text -quotation: Each chapter of the book begins with a short quotation. From what source is the first quotation? Why did the author use this as the introduction to this chapter? After reading the chapter, how does the quotation enhance or enrich the ideas within this chapter? (I have students track these introductory quotations by answering the same questions)

Discuss the mood that the reader feels (Mood=Me) by having the organization of the two chapters are arranged as the beginning and the end. Discuss the TONE (Tone=auThor) the author is using as he sets up the reader to react a certain way. Is he creating McCandless as either a sympathetic or unsympathetic character? How? Modeling: Using the description of McCandless’ corpse, have students create a word choice commentary. How would they describe the description? Clinical? Gruesome? Horrific? What was the author attempting to do with this type of language? Distance the death? The reader? The Horror? What type of reactions did the author want? Shock? Horror? Blasé? Indifference? “Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days or weeks prior to death. At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighted sixty-seven pounds. Starvation was posited as the most probable cause of death.”

– compare and contrast the first two chapters. “The Alaska Interior” = The Beginning “The Stampeded Trail” = The End  What is the purpose of each chapter? One is character based. Two is setting based. Describe McCandless. Describe the land.

 What is the organization of each chapter? Where is the exposition/introduce of each chapter? For instance, chapter one is three paragraphs of exposition, while chapter two is only one.  What is the author showing us?

o Why was Jim Gallien, who gives McCandless a ride, initially concerned? What does he do to help McCandless? Why was Gallien unconcerned at the end and why does he leave McCandless alone? How does McCandless’s actions show he is not the “normal” hiker? o Why does Krakauer use Jack London’s quote at the beginning of Chapter 2 and how does it relate to the poem by realist/naturalist Stephen Crane? . A man said to the universe, . “Sir, I exist!” . “However,” replied the universe, . “The fact has not created in me . A sense of obligation.”

Examples (Modeling): Using a graphic organizer such as a T-Bar or Venn diagram to compare and contrast

Check for Understanding: Have students identified differences and highlighted them in the T-Bar.

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Look at the Last paragraph of each chapter: What is the purpose of each? Are they effective? What is the big question they both leave us asking? Do the actions of Chris McCandless appear as the actions of “normal or sane” people? Vocabulary: continue dictionary (remember to collect at least every eight chapters)

Homework (Independent Practice): READ chapters 3 and 4. You can use critical issues questions as homework.

Enhancement: Some literary concept questions  What -ism do we see in the second chapter: naturalism.  What is an epic journey? (Review for some classes, introduction for others)  Can we envision this story as a tragedy (By classic definition, by modern definition) o Read Into the Wild as Greek Tragedy by Scott Malia, Ph.D. (essay follows)  Can we envision this story as a hero’s journey (tragic hero?)

Evaluation: Into the Wild as Greek Tragedy Scott Malia received his PhD in drama from Tufts University, and he currently works in theater and education. In the following essay, Dr. Malia discusses the similarities between the book Into the Wild and ancient Greek tragedy.

Whether he was a vagabond, genius, whack job, free spirit, rebel, or poet, Christopher McCandless (also known by the pseudonym Alexander Supertramp) was unique among men. At an age when most upper-class kids begin their arduous climb toward becoming the next big thing, Christopher McCandless went in the opposite direction—he became a nobody. His two-year descent into the furthest margins of society baffled and fascinated many, including author Jon Krakauer. Following an article he wrote for Outside magazine, Krakauer authored a painstaking reconstruction of McCandless’s odyssey, Into the Wild. In committing the story to paper, Krakauer attempts to answer one question: why did McCandless do it? It is an impossible question to answer no matter how earnestly Krakauer pursues it. Krakauer acknowledges his own obsession in the introduction, and his crafting of the story raises its own questions. By fashioning the last two years of Christopher McCandless’s life into the book Into the Wild, is Krakauer making it a modern-day tragedy? Does Into the Wild invite parallels to notions of tragedy originating in ancient Greece? If so, what elements apply? Much of what we know about how the ancient Greeks developed and evaluated tragedy comes from Aristotle—or so some think. His treatise, Poetics, may not have been written by him and instead may represent the notes of a student or students at one of his many lectures. Either way, the document is still considered the starting point for any discussion of the nature of tragedy and includes analysis of tragedy’s composite elements. To examine Into the Wild's fitness for comparison, Aristotelian notions of tragic heroes and the definition of tragedy must be considered, along with staple structural elements like choruses and poetic language. All tragedies center on a hero, so in order to determine whether Chris McCandless has been transformed into one in Krakauer’s book, McCandless’s resemblance to a tragic hero must be established in specific terms. In the Greek model, tragic heroes usually come from noble families. While Chris was neither a prince nor the son of a politician, he did come from an upper-class background. He also went on a journey, as many tragic heroes do. Yet the real test of his status as a tragic hero is his embodiment of a trait the Greeks called hamartia. Since it is a translated term, its exact meaning is often debated but can generally be interpreted as “tragic flaw,” a trait that blindsides the hero and leads him to his own ruin. While some would certainly argue that McCandless was fanatical or hubristic in taking on nature itself, that definition does not quite fit the McCandless depicted in Into the Wild. After all, Krakauer’s whole purpose in writing the book was to try to determine what trait led McCandless down his ultimately terminal path. Mere pride or adolescent stupidity seems like an incomplete answer. Another interpretation of hamartia presents it less as a character flaw than a misunderstanding of one’s place in the world. In this light, hamartia seems to fit Chris McCandless quite well. The rich kid who leaves the material world, his family, and his identity behind to pursue enlightenment in the natural landscape seems the very definition of someone looking for his place. In some ways, Krakauer presents McCandless’s transformation into Alexander Supertramp in this light in Into the Wild: an ambitious young man who erroneously saw himself as an adventurer in the outdoors. Linking hamartia to the fate of a tragic hero is crucial to this interpretation. According to Into the Wild, Chris McCandless died because of his own misconception of himself. In the Greek tragic model, a chorus typically served many purposes, one of which was to try to warn the tragic hero of his own hamartia. In order for the results to be a true tragedy, however, the hero does not listen. Krakauer portrays McCandless’s descent into death in a similar fashion. Krakauer structures the whole story as a flashback, often retaining narrative details from the present. Throughout the book, he includes minutiae about his interview subjects’ appearance, manner, gait, and living conditions. In each chapter, the reader is keenly aware that the subjects are reflecting back upon McCandless’s life armed with the knowledge of his death (and the emotions brought on by his passing). As a result, the reflections of the people whose lives McCandless touched are tinged by sadness, regret, and a potent sense of foreboding. In this structure, McCandless’s friends and acquaintances serve as a kind of Greek chorus. Their stories all contain warnings they gave McCandless or ways they tried to alter his path in life. The man who dropped McCandless off in Alaska for his final hike tried to talk the headstrong Chris out of it, or at least get him to improve his gear before the dangerous jaunt. The elderly Ron Franz, whose own life is filled with family tragedy, offered to adopt Alex/Chris as a means to fortify their tie and keep him close. Throughout the story, Chris McCandless’s bonds to his friends in South Dakota seemed strongest of all, as if perhaps they had the best chance of keeping Chris/Alex from taking off for Alaska. Much of the structure of Into the Wild is built upon this chorus of people charmed and warmed enough by McCandless’s spirit to try to stop him from going too far. Author Krakauer’s own voice joins this chorus in fashioning even more pointed warnings about McCandless’s recklessness. Krakauer includes accounts of other self- styled adventurers who made similar Alaskan treks. In the interest of perspective, some of the tales are of seasoned climbers who succumbed to the dangers of the wilderness; others are simply reckless endeavors that were poorly planned and executed, yielding tragic results. Still others tell of real insanity, of fanaticism that bypassed hubris and suicidal tendencies because the traveler’s mindset was so clearly unfit. While Krakauer uses these stories to provide counterpoints to try to explore the reasons behind McCandless’s drive, they increase the sense of impending doom in much the same way as choral odes do. Another structural staple of tragedy (and one much discussed by Aristotle) is poetic language. At first glance, the plainspoken, everyday chitchat and regional patois found in Into the Wild may seem an unlikely fit. In truth, Krakauer goes out of his way to capture the “characters” in McCandless’s life without linguistic hyperbole. Yet in including excerpts from McCandless’s diaries and letters, Krakauer does achieve an element of poetry. In Krakauer’s assessment, Chris McCandless was somewhat precious on the page. His diaries often refer to himself in the third person, and his letters certainly bear the influence of the literary works that he so loved. Yet structurally, Krakauer achieves a kind of inversion of the implementation of poetic language used in Greek tragedy. Where in traditional tragedy, the scenes of dialogue are interrupted by the more poetic choral odes, in Into the Wild the plainspoken chorus of McCandless’s friends is interspersed with McCandless’s more florid (and affected) writings. Though the technique is inverted in his book, Krakauer achieves the balance of different types of language employed in traditional tragedy. In the Aristotelian sense, tragedy also has to have a catharsis—a purgation of two emotions most frequently translated as pity and fear. Where scholars tend to differ is whether this catharsis is felt by the tragic hero, the audience, or both. Whether Chris McCandless/Alexander Supertramp experienced a catharsis is also a matter of debate. Certainly the written materials he left behind indicate a growing dread about his circumstances. The bigger question, and one that perhaps drove Krakauer to write Into the Wild in the first place, is whether McCandless ever truly recognized his own misconception of his place in the world. Readers are left without an answer. Whether or not Into the Wild is ultimately cathartic for the reader, Krakauer certainly edges the story in that direction. Despite Chris/Alex’s repeated efforts to hold people at a distance, his inherent gregariousness created bonds throughout his travels. One woman became enraptured by his passion and intelligence after spending only one night with him in a spirited discussion of life and literature. The passing of McCandless is more keenly felt because of these attachments, so it is at least cathartic for his friends, regardless of the reader’s response. Finally, tragedy is often translated as being “whole” or “complete” and having “weight” or “magnitude.” Does nto the Wild give McCandless that importance? After all, he was just a kid who wandered the country looking for the meaning of life and trying to find himself. He did not start a cultural revolution, nor did he incite changes in government or education. If he had not died in that bus in Alaska, the article in Outside magazine that Krakauer wrote would never have appeared. No one would know about the journey of Alexander Supertramp. Still, Christopher McCandless did die, and because of that, Krakauer penned the successful book Into the Wild. In doing so, he crafted a modern-day answer to Greek tragedy that gave Christopher McCandless’s life the magnitude it deserves.

Scott, Malia. "Into the Wild: Into the Wild as Greek Tragedy." Beacham's Encylopedia of Popular Fiction. Ed. Kirk H. Beetz. Vol. 9. Beacham-Gale, 1996. eNotes.com. January 2005. 17 July 2006 . AP English

Lesson Plan: Carthage and Detrital Wash

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Connotation/Denotation = using selected words from chapter three, does Krakauer appear sympathetic to Westerberg? What is the language and tone McCandless uses as he writes his sister? How does it differ with the language and tone McCandless uses as he writes his parents?

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Connotation/Denotation = using selected words from chapter three, does Krakauer appear sympathetic to Westerberg?

Examples (Modeling): Assign students to different collaborative groups and have students create a T-Bar of the two letters. They will they share out in whole class discussion.

What is the language and tone McCandless uses as he writes his sister? How does it differ with the language and tone McCandless uses as he writes his parents?

Check for Understanding: Write a short essay (1-5 paragraphs)

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt myself in a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.” –Leo Tolstoy, in “Family Happiness”

Krakauer asserts that motivated by his reading Leo Tolstoy, McCanless an idealist embraced Tolstoy’s ideals of hard work. What other practices of Tolstoy did McCandless adopt? Tolstoy rejected the physical comforts of the larger society. Is McCandless merely seeks to put Tolstoy’s ideas into practice by living alone off the land? How does using Tolstoy’s quote show the author’s intention? Is he implying McCandless was questioning the conventional? What in the text supports your answer?

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Chapter Four concludes with words written by “Alex.” “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found” (37).

Analyze the various experiences Alex had within these chapters and explain what “meaning” you think Alex has found. What text supports your assertions? Or

Many have labeled Chapter 4 as evidence of McCandless’s foolishness? Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this idea.

Homework (Independent Practice): READ chapters 5, 6 and 7.

Enhancement: Who is Wallace Stenger? Why would references about him and quotations from him be effectively used in Into the Wild?

Evaluation: AP English

Lesson Plan: Bullhead City, Anza-Borrego, Carthage

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): List the people that McCandless (Alex Supertramp) has met so far during his journey. What impression did he make upon the people he met? Give textual references to support your observation.

Why do you think that he doesn’t use the pronoun, “I” and instead refers to himself using the third person when he writes within in journal. Give textual references to support your observation.

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Introduce the idea of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. How do the various encounters with people and decisions McCandless makes support the theory of human needs?

What details in Chapter Five and Six indicate that Chris McCandless could or could not return to the “normal” life if he had wanted to do so? Remember, the book is ambiguous. What are the ambiguities that the author uses? Examine his life in Bullhead City, Arizona and his relationship with Jan and Bob Burgess.

Using Maslow’s Theory, what does his return visit to Jan and Bob reveal about McCandless?

Evaluating the author’s style. Is the author merely journalistically portraying events, or does the language he uses reveal a bias? Is he editorializing? (We will see more of this as we look into Chapter 7 and the relationship between McCandless and his mother and father.)

Does McCandless’s interaction with Ron Franz make McCandless a more sympathetic or pathetic character? Choose your examples well. What did each person gain from the relationship between McCandless and Franz. Examples (Modeling): Bullhead City Can Live in Society Can’t Live In Society Opens a checking account Doesn’t bathe frequently and works too slow Got a Job Left suddenly (In time, frequent changes in Used His Real Name jobs makes a person less employable.

Check for Understanding: Students complete the chart using Chapter Five and Six.

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Which chapter is most developed? What does the author give us that we needed to learn to understand McCandless better?

Homework (Independent Practice): Students will read the script pages that involve Westerberg and McCandless. Pages 47-62 of the script. Using the script located at www.vantageguilds.com/itw/FinalScript_ITW.pdf review script format Notices the differences between the book and the script. How do the two authors’ work complement each other; how are their works at odds with each other?

Evaluation: AP English

Lesson Plan: Bullhead City, Anza-Borrego, Carthage (continued)

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Using the script located at www.vantageguilds.com/itw/FinalScript_ITW.pdf review script format. Ask the students what they noticed about the two texts. Compression of events and scenes often occur in scripts, why? What can the reader do that the movie audience can’t do? What does the movie director have as his tools to tell the story that the author lacks?

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Read the parts from scene 172 on page 119 to scene 210 on page 138

This part of the script involves Ron Franz. Characterize Ronald Franz before you begin to read the script/characterize Ron Franz after you read the script. Show the video. Characterize Ron Franz after the video. In which version were you left to create your own images; how does have the images fully visualize change the story?

Who is introduced in the book, but not in the script at this time? Explain that throughout the film, Penn has used flashbacks intermingled with events. These flashbacks do not necessary occur at the event, but are part of the story Krakauer wrote. Why can’t the text of a book continually interrupt the story with a flashback? How does the dialogue created by Penn add to or change the story?

Examples (Modeling): Read the letter Chris McCandless wrote to Franz from South Dakota on pages 56-58. What advice does McCandless give Franz? What seems ironic in the fact that McCandless giving advice to someone like Franz? How does Franz take the advice?

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Give students a copy of Jack London’s biography. Students should be aware that London was a a favorite author of McCandless. Ask the students to write why London might have been influential in McCandless’s life. What textual evidence suggests that McCandless’s ideas might be romantic visions of London’s Alaska. Homework (Independent Practice): READ chapters 8, 9, and 10. Have students read London’s short story “To Build a Fire.” Ask student to speculate: If Penn had chosen to show McCandless reading London’s short story, how would that change the viewer’s response to and ideas about Alex/Chris? AP English

Lesson Plan: Alaska, Dutch Gulch, Fairbanks

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Re-read and consider the Chris’s notes at the end of chapter seven. What is attitude? What his tone? What do you sense as a reader? Take out your predictions from DAY ONE, write a new prediction.

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Why do you feel Krakauer interrupts the story with chapters 8 -9? “If may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invent themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.” By using Theodore Roszak’s quotation, what is Krakauer attempting to show? “If may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invent themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

What other people thought of McCandless’s death: reading the early part of chapter 8 and the handout (following this lesson plan) have students respond to one comment. Think-Pair-Share (give groups a chance to discuss which letter members of the group chose and why?

In a whole class discussion, examine the effect of authorial intrusion, which occurs in chapter 8. What is your response? Is it annoying, pretentious, and even narcissistic, or does it offer credibility (ethos) to Krakauer’s persona as author of this text?

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure): Much of Krakauer’s tale seems circular. He introduces us to a character, veers the story away from that character only to have the character re-emerge. Why? For instance, how does the reappearance of Jim Gallien enhance the story? Could it be with the order of discovery that occurs and Krakauer is taking on the journey that leads to unraveling McCandless’s story? Why has he chosen to tell us that McCandless died early? Does he believe readers will want a different ending?

Homework (Independent Practice):

Outside magazine, March 1993

Letters: Innocence or Ignorance?

I was very moved by Jon Krakauer's "Death of an Innocent." When I was 25 I organized an expedition to walk across the Canadian Arctic. Like Christopher McCandless, my crew and I shared a deep longing to understand our place in the world outside the context of civilization. We were young, self-absorbed, and confused. What alarms me now is that a single newspaper ad for my expedition attracted more than 400 responses. The story of McCandless advises us to temper our dreams with knowledge and experience and to respect wilderness rather than try to conquer it. Peter Harmathy North York, Ontario, Canada

Krakauer skillfully reminds us that the wilderness is not a place to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. McCandless's death was perhaps a humble reconciliation with what it means to be human in the context of wild spaces far larger than we are. Laura A. Freshman Prescott, Arizona

How many of us, like Chris McCandless and the young man who dissipates the Maze in Ed Abbey's Desert Solitaire, have wandered our own outbacks, clearly without a death wish but naively oblivious to the potential pain to those who love us? But then God loves a fool, and most of us have survived our own recklessness. I'm grateful to have made it through my own attempts to peer over the edge and solve life's riddles in a single bound. Tom Hoopingarner Breckenridge, Colorado

I take exception to the premise of Krakauer's story: I don't admire people who suffer from willful ignorance of the land and Chris McCandless seems like a classic example. Close calls are part of the deal; they're hardly news. In Alaska I've run into several McCandless types--idealistic, energetic young guys who overestimate themselves, underestimate the country, and end up in trouble. They've become almost cliché. I'd also have to say that there was a world of difference between McCandless, with his pseudoliterary, narcissistic sense of melodrama, and the papar who sailed to Iceland and Greenland: Those Irish monks didn't blab nonstop in bars over what they'd done or take a series of self-portraits in their scary little tubs. Nick Jans Ambler Alaska

I've had adventures and tested myself in my lifetime, but never have I understood the urge, romantic as it sounds, to be minimalistic. To venture forth into unfamiliar environments ill-prepared in intellect, experience, or equipment and immediately immerse oneself in subsistence is to court disaster. Richard V. Simon Newport Beach, California

Krakauer did a magnificent job of communicating McCandless's existential struggle. McCandless wanted to be independent of people, but he was dependent on nature--even the most self-reliant among us still needs air, warmth, food, and water. So his search for independence was ultimately suicidal, since death is the only way we can no longer be dependent on this world. After similar searchings myself, I've realized that spiritual awakenings ironically occur among people, not apart from them. John Shaughnessy Boston, Massachusetts In many cultures the asceticism of the young, through their vision quests into the wild, bridges the gap between idealism and reality, adolescence and adulthood. McCandless was young and foolish and never returned to share his vision, but at least he was a seeker. Krakauer should be thanked for reminding us to keep looking. James V. Murphy Fargo, North Dakota AP English

Lesson Plan: Alaska, Dutch Gulch, Fairbanks

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Re-read and consider the Chris’s notes at the end of chapter seven. What is attitude? What his tone? What do you sense as a reader? Take out your predictions from DAY ONE, write a new prediction.

Main Activity (Instructional Input):

How do the similar stories of Gene Rosellini, John Waterman, Carl McCunn, and Everett Ruess (Everett Reuss in particular) help us to understand “the call to adventure?” I pair the material with http://everettruess.net/ and allow students to see that the reckless or ill prepared adventurer may be a universal archetype for it is true that every period of time has had the lone adventurer seeking his/her own fate. From ancient Greek Odysseus to modern female Amelia Earhart to 2007 soloist and adventurer Steve Fossett, men and women have needed to test their own limits and press the boundaries of existence. Everett Ruess is just another adventurer (1930) and his story is just as interesting and compelling. Students can look at circumstances 50 years apart and see the same story.

Introduce Everett Reuss’s story and the website. Then I show the video Lost Forever Everett Ruess. Students are examining the similarities and differences in the protagonists. This helps students realize the universality of themes and then we revisit the issue of Krakauer’s authorial intrusion. Is he simply adding to the understanding the adventure, is he showing he survived and that except for a tragic mistake these two adventurers and similar adventurers would have been labeled “heroic” and “courageous” instead of foolhardy and reckless. All students read “Say I Kept the Dream.” http://everettruess.net/everetts_dream.html

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Yesterday, we closed talking about different endings. We suggested that the human being is conditioned to want “Happy Ever After Endings” Rewrite the ending of one of the contact/relationships McCandless experienced so far. How could the modification of that ending change the whole outcome of McCandless’s loss of life? (due for peer writer’s circle in three days.)

Homework (Independent Practice): Read chapter 11, 12, and 13. AP English

Lesson Plan: Family History (Chesapeake Beach, Annandale, Virginia Beach)

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): What is the common features in these three chapters? Think location, location, location, and how does McCandless’s life unfold? These chapters tell McCandless’s personal past, his family’s past, and how his family dealt with their loss and grief. Why are they placed in midway in the story which still has six chapters left for the reader to finish before the story is finished?

Main Activity (Instructional Input): What type of relationship does McCandless have with his father? How are the two men alike? Did any specific events or concepts exist in McCandless’s childhood that might indicate his future actions? How does his sister’s reaction demonstrate the lines of John Donne’s Meditation XVII (No Man Is An Island)? What does his mother’s dream/nightmare suggest about extraordinary senses?

Meditation XVII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.

Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die. Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another's dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security. 1624

Reading the text: How does the poem correlate with Krakauer’s account of McCandless’s life?

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Does your view of McCandless change once you read about his family history?

AP English

Lesson Plan: Rewriting a Detail; Affecting the Outcome

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): A golf term known as a Mulligan exists. Does anyone know what it is? It is allowing a player to have another shot off the tee without penalty. It is not something allowed in tournament play but some friendly games will determine a number of "mulligans" per round before the round begins. Using the analogy “life like the game of golf” and the concept of mulligans, discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the analogy.

Main Activity (Instructional Input):

The first thing to do if this is your first peer editing workshop is to ask students for some of the comments they have received in the past.

Write them on the blackboard. Include ones you have seen as well, such as I really love this paper, Your paper is excellent, this is a waste of ink and paper, you kan’t right.

Which are the one you want to hear? Which are the ones you never want to hear? Now: Which are the most helpful? (This list is usually small but it involves ones that address the text and how to improve it, what is good about the text, what is weak, etc.)

Announce your number one rule: All criticism must be SHOW ME criticism and directly relate to the writer’s words, structure, language, voice, content, etc.

Announce the number two rule: For everything that appears negative, the editor must show how to improve the text.

Announce the number three rule: The ratio of negative to positive comments should be 1:2 (first term) and (1:1 second term).

Handout your peer editing review form:

Peer Editing Form Writer's Name: ______Peer Editor’s Name:______Evaluation Guide Revision Guidelines Comments

Content Is the writing interesting? Add examples, an anecdote, dialogue, or additional details. Cut repetitious or boring details Does the writing achieve Add explanations, descriptive the writer's purpose? details, arguments, or narrative details. Are there enough details? Add more details, facts, or

examples to support your ideas. Are there unrelated ideas Cut irrelevant or distracting or details that distract the information. reader? Are unfamiliar terms Add definitions or other explained or defined? explanations of unfamiliar

terms. Replace unfamiliar terms with familiar ones. Organization Are ideas and details Reorder ideas and details to arranged in the best make the meaning clear. possible order? Are the logical Add transition words to link connections between ideas: therefore, for example, ideas and sentences because, and so on. clear? Style Is the meaning clear? Replace vague or unclear working. Use words and phrases

that are precise and easy to understand. Does the writing contain Cut or replace with specific clichés or overworked details and fresh comparisons. phrases Is the language Replace formal words with less appropriate for the formal words and phrases to audience and purpose? create an information time. To create a more formal tone, replace slang and contractions. Do sentences read Reorder to vary sentence smoothly? beginnings and sentence structure. Template based on "Guidelines for Evaluating and Revising" found in the Holt Rinehart and Winston Literature Supplementary Materials

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Read the comments made by your peer editor(s). Share your responses with your editors and tell them what the best piece of advice they offered was and why.

Homework (Independent Practice): Rewrite your endings using the comments you have received and be prepared with your publication ready draft 3 days from today. AP English

Lesson Plan: Family History (Chesapeake Beach, Annandale, Virginia Beach)

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): What is the common features in these three chapters? Think location, location, location, and how does McCandless’s life unfold? These chapters tell McCandless’s personal past, his family’s past, and how his family dealt with their loss and grief. Why are they placed in midway in the story which still has six chapters left for the reader to finish before the story is finished?

Main Activity (Instructional Input): What type of relationship does McCandless have with his father? How are the two men alike? Did any specific events or concepts exist in McCandless’s childhood that might indicate his future actions? How does his sister’s reaction demonstrate the lines of John Donne’s Meditation XVII (No Man Is An Island)? What does his mother’s dream/nightmare suggest about extraordinary senses?

This text is difficult so carefully select what you wish to discuss in what the time constraint allows you. I usually use the boldfaced portions to help students see that interconnectedness of all the stories in this text.

Meditation XVII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.

Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die. Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another's dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security. 1624

Reading the text: How does the poem correlate with Krakauer’s account of McCandless’s life?

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Does your view of McCandless change once you read about his family history? Homework (Independent Practice): Read Chapters 14-15. AP English

Lesson Plan: Krakauer’s Interjections, AGAIN (The Stikine Ice Cap)

VOCABULARY: ** these chapters have climbing terminology and it might be useful to provide a climbing glossary. http://www.santiamalpineclub.org/mountain/climbing/terms is an excellent dictionary of terms and provides an excellent pdf manual for climbing instructions http://www.santiamalpineclub.org/downloads/Mountain.Climbing.School.Manual.pdf

Sample of chapter words: melodramatic declaration, exfoliated stone, demarcates, gauzy reverie, desideratum, phantasmagoria, crampon front points

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): How many of you have ever broken up with someone? When a friend is hurting because of a breakup, does your own experience influence how you approach giving advice? How you tell the story of your friend’s breakup to another person? Write about your experience in counseling a friend who has broken up with another person. Be sure to explain how your own experience influenced your advice.

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Why did Krakauer include these two chapters about his experiences as a young man? Are they necessary to the overall structure of text. Do they add much? What? Identify his thesis for these chapters: My suspicion that McCandless’s death was unplanned, that is was a terrible accident comes from reading those few documents he left behind and from listening to the men and women who spent time with him over the final year of his life. But my sense of Chris McCandless’s intentions comes, too, from a more personal perspective.”

Compare the experiences that McCandless and Krakauer had? How are the two men’s relationships with their fathers similar? How might this lead Krakauer to believe that he understands McCandless? Can this “kinship” affect the way Krakauer perceives McCandless and the way he presents McCandless to the reading audience? In groups, the students answer the above questions and prepare to share their ideas in the whole class discussion.

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Krakauer writes, “It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.” Is Krakauer writing from a world ideology or an American ideology? Discuss the extent to which you believe it is a particular ideology and why you believe it is that ideology.

Homework (Independent Practice): Read chapters 16-17-18.

AP English

Lesson Plan: Krakauer’s Interjections, AGAIN

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): How many of you have ever broken up with someone? When a friend is hurting because of a breakup, does your own experience influence how you approach giving advice? How you tell the story of your friend’s breakup to another person? Write about your experience in counseling a friend who has broken up with another person. Be sure to explain how your own experience influenced your advice.

Main Activity (Instructional Input): Place students into groups and assign each group a chapter. Chapter 16: Include a discussion of Thoreau’s Walden and why McCandless might have found this account of “life in the woods” useful to him. How does the author try to manipulate emotions? What does McCandless discuss with Stuckey? How does McCandless affect Stuckey? How does the story of their interaction affect your ideas about McCandless? Are your emotions in conflict with your logical interpretation of events? In tragedy, we often seek for humorous relief, does Krakauer attempt to provide moments of humor?

Chapter 17: Krakauer says that McCandless has “idiosyncratic logic.” Why? What is idiosyncratic logic? When the author tries to restage Chris’s trip to Stampede Trail, what does he realize about how Chris might have saved himself? Why would a map have helped him? How does not having a map reveal the idiosyncratic logic Krakauer claim McCandless possesses? What is the “force not bound to be kind to a man?”

Chapter 18: What evidence is there that Chris might have planned to return to civilization is found in this chapter? Explain why he failed. Do you agree with Krakauer’s assessment that McCandless’s risky behavior is a “rite of passage in our culture?” McCandless’s writes his last note August 12 and dies about August 18. Do the events surrounding the deterioration of McCandless seem to support Krakauer’s assertion in chapter 18-- “Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God?”

In groups, the students answer the above questions and prepare to share their ideas in the whole class discussion.

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: Review your predictions…how accurate were they? What allowed you to make the predictions? Was it the content of the story? Was it familiarity with universal patterns of organization? If you were inaccurate, was it because the story took an unusual path?

Homework (Independent Practice): Read the epilogue, be prepared for an inclass timed writing assignment.

AP English

Lesson Plan: Epilogue

Warm Up Activity (Anticipatory Set): Have you ever considered suicide? Finish this sentence: Although many times, people who consider suicide think of the pain that their family and friends will suffer, the suicidal person feels …

Main Activity (Instructional Input): In the epilogue, McCandless’s parents’ grief is exposed to the reader. What are some of the thoughts that Billie and Walt share? How does viewing the bus affect McCandless’s parents?

Project # 1: In the story, McCandless prepares for his adventure and even visits the library at the University of Alaska to study berries. This information appears to contradict the idea that the young man was seeking to end his life; he would not appear suicidal. But many argue that risky behavior is an attention seeking cry for help. Your assignment is to determine your own argument to the question: Was McCandless suicidal? You might want to examine adolescent suicide. Create a PowerPoint presentation.

Project #2: Create a visual brochure for a guided tour: McCandless’s Final Year. Create the tour guide script for the most interesting places and events.

Project #3: Create a papier-mâché mask of McCandless and using quotations from the book present the material as if you were Chris McCandless/Alex Supertramp.

Wrap-Up Activity (Closure) and Independent Practice: In-class Essay Outline: Prepare a sketch outline for an in-class essay (tomorrow) defining Chris McCandless’s character.

Important People Christopher McCandless Jon Krakauer Wayne Westerberg Jim Gallien Thompson, Samel and Swanson Jack London Jan Burres Walt McCandless Billie McCandless Carine McCandless Henry David Thoreau Ronald Franz Gail Borah Mary Westerberg

Important Places Carthage, South Dakota Fairbanks, Alaska Denali (AK) The Stampede Trail (AK) Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia Detrital Wash (AZ) Colorado River Gulf of California Bullhead City, Arizona Salton City, California Anza-Borrego Desert State Park (CA) Annandale, Virginia