krakauer's methods

It is obvious from reading "into the wild" that Krakauer's research was methodical, extensive, and gave a global view of the issue. Also, he presented his research as fact. It is easy discern the supposition from the fact in certain parts of the book if you closely examine them. For example, in the chapter that he talks about how Chris's parents were feeling at the exact moment that they learned of his death, well obviously he can't know exactly how they feel. But learning how Chris's parents felt about Chris before and after his death, he had a fairly good idea of how they were feeling. But by presenting his opinion and ideas as fact, he concretes them in the readers eyes, and this helps to prevent the story from being questioned. This also came into play when he was telling the stories of all the people that Chris met before going to Alaska. Judging from the questionable mental stability of some of the people he references, i really doubt that even they know exactly what was said in their conversations with Chris, or how they felt about it, so when Krakauer just made a solid statement about it, it was much more effective than if he involved the readers in his estimates of these people's testimonies.