“As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane-as a means of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devout-there may be no more potent force than religion.”
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is about the true life murders of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month daughter Erica at the hands of her brother-in-law who is in the clutches of a fundamental mormon sect, or at least that is what it is supposed to be about. Under the Banner of Heaven focused more on the background the Mormon religion and the events that led up to the fundamentalists splitting off. There was about one chapter regarding the Lafferty’s for every three chapters dealing with old-school Mormonism.
Since I was hoping to read a true-crime story, and not another book about the evils of Fundamentalism and how it began, I was disappointed with this book. If you are interested in reading about the early-days of Mormonism, this book would be a good place to start. It is well written and researched. The complicated events are explained with just enough detail so as not to be too vague nor too confusing.
“The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.”
You know how the book is always better than the movie? In this case, it was especially true. I have tried to watch this movie a couple of times. Now, to be fair, I can have a very short attention span and if I am not in the mood for a movie, nothing will make me get through it. This book was so good. I really, really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would. I have read one other book my Krakauer, and I can say that I really enjoy his writing style. I don’t know what it is, but he makes tragic events easier to stomach without taking away from the sadness. He makes them more bearable.
The book follows the story of Chris McCandless’s adventure in the Alaskan wild. It begins with the discovery of his body, and then retraces his steps from high school to his university graduation. Krakauer investigates McCandless’s relationships with his family as well as those with people he met on the road.
McCandless lived the life of a nomad following his university graduation. He cut all ties with his family and set out on the road looking for adventure. He was quick to make friends wherever he went, and he maintained these relationships even while he was still wandering. He eventually makes his way to the Alaskan bush and begins an adventure to live off the land for the summer with only a 10 pound bag of rice.
McCandless’s downfall is, above all, his incredible naiveté. He believed that he could survive in the wilderness with nothing more than a bag of rice and a gun. He didn’t have a map, a compass, or any other means of navigation should he have to abandon his attempt. He was an incredibly resourceful young man though. He would have survived his attempt had he not made one grave error. One little mistake that no one could have foreseen cost him his life.
At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn’t yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who’d entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn’t resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle…
— Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.
— Alex McCandless in Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.
— Alex McCandless in Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
— Alex McCandless in Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
— Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.
— Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
When the boy headed off into the Alaska bush, he entertained no illusions that he was trekking into a land of milk and honey; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were precisely what he was seeking. And that is what he found, in abundance.
— Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
