Into the Wild: Chapters 1–7

by Jon Krakauer
Nonfiction writer Jon Krakauer retraces the steps of Christopher McCandless, a young man who gave up his material possessions and met a tragic end in the wilds of Alaska.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–7, Chapters 8–13, Chapter 14–Epilogue

Here is a link to our lists for Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. unsullied
    spotlessly clean and fresh
    Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives.
  2. contumacious
    willfully obstinate; stubbornly disobedient
    Thompson, Samel, and Swanson, however, are contumacious Alaskans with a special fondness for driving motor vehicles where motor vehicles aren’t really designed to be driven.
  3. autopsy
    an examination and dissection of a dead body
    The body was taken to Anchorage, where an autopsy was performed at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory.
  4. estranged
    caused to be unloved
    If McCandless felt estranged from his parents and siblings, he found a surrogate family in Westerberg and his employees, most of whom lived in Westerberg's Carthage home.
  5. surrogate
    providing nurture though not related by blood or legal ties
    If McCandless felt estranged from his parents and siblings, he found a surrogate family in Westerberg and his employees, most of whom lived in Westerberg's Carthage home.
  6. altruistic
    showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others
    (The latter is a reference to Tolstoy’s protagonist and alter ego, Pierre Bezuhov — altruistic, questing, illegitimately born.)
  7. itinerary
    a proposed route of travel
    Five weeks earlier he’d loaded all his belongings into his little car and headed west without an itinerary.
  8. onerous
    burdensome or difficult to endure
    He had spent the previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college.
  9. inimical
    tending to obstruct or cause harm
    The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and physiologically alien, sensorily austere, esthetically abstract, historically inimical....
  10. egress
    the act or means of going out
    There was nowhere to move the car, however, as the only route of egress was now a foaming, full-blown river.
  11. temperamental
    subject to sharply varying moods
    Didn’t like to be around too many people, though. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes — know what I’m saying?
  12. anachronistic
    chronologically misplaced
    On January 4, 1993, this writer received an unusual letter, penned in a shaky, anachronistic script that suggested an elderly author.
  13. desiccated
    thoroughly dried out
    Away from the lakeshore the land rises gently and then abruptly to form the desiccated, phantasmal badlands of Anza-Borrego.
  14. nexus
    the means of connection between things linked in series
    When he needed provisions, he would hitch or walk the four miles into town, where he bought rice and filled his plastic water jug at the market-liquor store-post office, a beige stucco building that serves as the cultural nexus of greater Salton City.
  15. fulminate
    criticize severely
    Not infrequently during their visits, Franz recalls, McCandless’s face would darken with anger and he’d fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic idiocy of mainstream American life.
Created on Fri Oct 03 21:23:32 EDT 2014 (updated Mon Jul 07 11:16:43 EDT 2025)

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