Summary of into the wild chapter two

The narrator relates the history of an abandoned school bus located on a remote section of the Stampede Trail in Denali National Park. Once in service in Fairbanks, the bus was bought and converted to workers’ housing, then left behind as shelter for hunters and campers after the construction project was abandoned due to lack of funds. Such is its condition when three different groups of hunters and hikers visit it in 1992. Three moose hunters cross the difficult Teklanika River in their trucks in September of that year and encounter two other people who have already discovered the bus. The other two have decided not to go inside it because a frighteningly bad smell is emanating from it. There is an S.O.S. note tied to the bus’s antenna that declares that its occupant, Christopher J. McCandless, is sick and needs help. The note also says that he has gone out to forage for berries and will return.

Inside the bus, the hunters find a rifle, paperback books, clothing, a backpack, and other supplies. In the back, on a bunk, is a dead body that is so shrunken and small one of the moose hunters at first has trouble determining that it is a person. The reader knows the body to be Christopher McCandless. The police, however, have not yet been able to identify it. The hunters arrange for the body to be transported to Anchorage. State troopers arrive in a helicopter the next morning. Additional searches of the bus reveal several rolls of film and McCandless’s diary, which contains 113 entries and is written in a guide to edible plants. An autopsy undertaken at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Alaska cannot determine the exact reason the deceased was no longer able to leave his bed to find food. The cause of death is established as starvation. The identity of the body still remains unknown.

Explanation:

swipe left