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Get out your copy of the Author’s Note from Friday and respond to the following journal prompt quietly.

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Journal: What questions do you have about the Author’s Note, the story, or the author? Write at least two! Then, write a reflection of the Author’s Note. Make a connection to it, write an analysis of it, etc.

• I can draw conclusions about the author’s purpose, basic beliefs and perspectives. (Author’s Note and introduction) • I can evaluate how vocabulary contributes to a text’s presentation. (Vocabulary)

By Jon Krakauer

• Into the Wild is a 1996 non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. It is an expansion of Krakauer's 9,000-word article on Christopher McCandless titled "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside.

• The book was adapted to film in 2007, directed by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless.

• Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writings about the outdoors, especially mountain-climbing. • He is the author of best-selling non-fiction books—Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where

Men Win Glory: The Odyssey

of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles.

• We know so much about Chris’s journey because Jon Krakauer had access to the journal Chris kept while he was traveling. Krakauer also had access to the letters Chris wrote to people he met along the way.

• In his journal Chris wrote updates in both first and

third person.

• First person: “I am delighted to be at school today.” • Third person: “She is delighted to be at school today.” • First person: “I am about to read chapter one from this awesome book.” • Third person: “Ms. Nye is about to read chapter one from this awesome book.”

“A very fateful day.” After traveling some distance south, he beached the canoe on a sandbar far from shore to observe the powerful tides. An hour later violent gusts started blowing down from the desert, and the wind and tidal rips conspired to carry him out to sea. The water by this time was a chaos of whitecaps that threatened to swamp and capsize his tiny craft. The wind increased to gale force. The whitecaps grew into high, breaking waves. “In great frustration,” the journal reads, “he screams

and beats canoe with oar. The oar breaks. Alex has one spare oar. He calms himself. If loses second oar is dead. Finally through extreme effort and much cursing he manages to beach canoe on jetty and collapses exhausted on sand at sundown. This incident led

Alexander to decide to abandon canoe and return north.”

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Krakauer uses elevated vocabulary in this novel. For example, he uses the word “contumacious” instead of “rebellious.” Why

would an author do that?

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How would a reader’s relationship to a story change if the vocabulary was simpler?

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Vocabulary words for this week coming next!

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For each of the following words, write the word, its definition, and copy the sentence from the book where the word appears.

1.

Congenial (5)—friendly 2.

3.

Escarpments (10)—a steep slope Antimony (10)—a metallic element Anomaly (11)—glitch, inconsistency Contumacious (11)—rebellious Visage (16)—face Amiable (16)—good-natured Convivial (18)—sociable 9.

Plebeian (18)—crude, common 10.

Mien (18)—appearance 11.

Onerous (22)—troublesome