In this essay I will be comparing the differences between the book of Into the Wild and the film. I will be talking in extra detail about Chris McCandless and his family. In the film the family is seen as one that cares about Chris very much but sometimes Chris just thinks they are doing too much and he thinks that having things and products in life is pointless. One example of this is when after his graduation ceremony he goes to celebrate with his family and his mum and dad say that they’re getting him a new car. Chris then gets angry and explains to his sister that he doesn’t like the idea of them buying his love by getting him new things.
In the film Walt McCandless is presented as being a world apart from his son because they never have any long conversations and they are not seen very often getting along really well and the main conversations between the family gets really awkward or just goes quiet when Chris and Walt don’t see eye to eye on something. Whereas in the novel, Walt McCandless is presented as sharing similar core characteristics such as being stubborn when they feel what they are doing is the right thing to do. An example of this from the film is when the sports team enter the restaurant which the family is eating in, which is very formal and quiet at the time, there is an over-the-shoulder shot of Walt’s reaction compared with a similar shot of Chris. These shots show Chris smiling because he can tell that the sports team coming in and making such loud noises is annoying his mum and dad plus Chris likes the idea of someone standing up and going against the rules every once in a while. An example of this from the novel is colleagues refer to Walt as brilliant while Chris “came into this world with unusual gifts” this tells us that by saying Chris and Walt have similar characteristics they are both brilliant and have unusual gifts.
The film presents Walt McCandless as stubborn the same way as Chris is whereas the novel presents Walt as being a good dad that cares about Chris and Carine a lot. One example of this from the film is when Walt is arguing with Chris about the new car and what he’s going to do in the future. This shows Walt is caring because your family usually only argue with you about these things because they care about you and want the best for you. An example from the novel is when Chris goes into the wild, Walt goes a bit crazy because of how sad he is because of the loss he feels about Chris leaving and dying plus Carine shows Walt and Billie all the letters that Chris left for them before he left telling them what he was doing and why he was going into the wild. This made Walt angry because he felt he must have been doing something wrong if Chris felt like he could not tell them in person where he was going or what he was doing.
The film presents Billie McCandless as loving and easily pleased whereas in the novel Billie is a good mum that cares about other people more than herself. One example of this from the film is when she doesn’t argue or make a big scene with Chris or Walt about the car conversation the family is having at dinner unlike Walt who is getting annoyed at Chris because he thinks he is ungrateful for not taking the new car. An example from the novel is when Chris decides to give Billie a mother’s day present after telling the whole family that he will no longer give out presents from now on. Billie is almost overwhelmed with happiness because Chris did this for her because she knows that he’s not really a person that goes back on his word and because he has done it this one time for her makes her feel very special.
The film presents Carine as quiet and not a really talkative person. She tends to stay away from everyone and the only person she really ever talks to and the only one she has a long conversation with is her brother Chris. Whereas in the novel she is presented as a very talkative person because she tends to talk to a lot more people and the people she does talk to it is a long conversation and she seems to have a lot of things to say about everything that’s going on. One example of this from the film is when she’s in in the car with Chris and he’s telling her a poem about the relationship between his mum and dad and how they met and how sometimes he feels that they never did but of course if they never did then neither Carine or Chris would be born. While Chris is telling her this she only says one word. One example of this from the novel is generally she talks about the family a lot and just shares her views on everything that’s going on. This is also shown in the film because she does a voice over on most of the key scenes of the film and this helps the person that is watching the film because it can help them understand everything that is going on.
The film presents the family on a whole as a close one with some very awkward situations that seem to make their relationship go apart such as dinner after the graduation ceremony. The director chooses some camera shots to make Chris and Carine appear as being closer to each other than they both are to their parents. The camera shots help with this because they show you that the brother and sister (Chris and Carine) are sitting closer than the parents are and that the parents are almost isolated from them. The novel also represents this by saying that Chris used to walk Carine home. This shows that Chris cared about her and would rather do that instead of spending time with his parents which in other words could be called antisocial because he’s not going out of his way to spend time with his whole family, just one member of it.
The film presents Chris as not wanting to be part of the family because he feels the way of life is not for him and generally Chris is a rebel anyway so by going against his family it’s showing everyone that he may not like his family as much as he leads everyone to believe. In the novel, Chris is presented as a person that doesn’t like to be in the company of other people this is shown because in the novel you never really see Chris being in the company of many people.
So the novel and the film of into the wild represents the family as a whole as a kind of not normal family because sometimes they are getting along perfectly well. However sometimes all of them are just not getting along at all plus there are also some really awkward moments between them all such as I said before the dinner as a family after Chris’s Graduation ceremony. Like Chris and Carine having a really close relationship and the mum and dad (Walt and Billie) looking away from them both when Chris said no to the new car that Billie and Walt offered him because he graduated. As well as this some of the camera angles in the film when watching the scene of the dinner you can see that Chris and Carine and really close together and that Walt and Billie are, I think, making themselves isolated from them and it just seems that they both want to be as far away from them both as possible which is not what a family should be like. It should be that they are always as close as they can possibly be to each other all the time. Another example of this is when Walt and Billie find out finally that Chris has decided to go in to the wild Billie is the one that gets visibly upset and Walt just goes silent and they is no way of telling how he really feels so you don’t know if he’s upset or something different. So the main comparison between the novel and the film is that I think you can get a lot more information about the family members one by one and as a whole a lot better as the novel because as well as them talking and telling you about them themselves, you can make you own choice about if you like them or not. Plus I think when you see how people behave visually you can learn a lot more about them and other people that are with them a lot more than a novel telling you all of this in words.
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