L’essenziale. Ovvero, l’immagine del limite in Jon Krakauer e Bruce Chatwin

Abstract

This paper analyses how Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and In Patagonia represent, each in its own way, an image of the limit – this limit being not only visual but also existential. These stories take place in remote places where the protagonists of the narratives cross the borders of everyday life in order to discover extreme, unexplored surroundings. If the intent of capturing the experience of survival in the Alaskan wilderness finds its objective correlative in Chris McCandless’ camera shots, in Into Thin Air it is the images of both geographical and physical limits that accompany the narrative. In Chatwin’s travelogue, on the other hand, the awareness of existing at the edge of the Earth is embodied in its narrative structure where digressions are more frequent than linear progression.