Chapter Analysis: Into the Wild, Chapter 1; by Cloudwhisper

Some people need a reminder of the thrill of opening Into the Wild… that’s exactly what Cloudwhisper does in this article!

Do you remember the first time you opened Into the Wild?

The thrill of turning the covers and page after page?

I do. I have to admit since I’m a very new person to the series it wasn’t very long ago, maybe in late December or January? It was on a cruise I had, but enough life stories.

Now I’d like you to get that book. Turn the pages until Chapter 1 and try to supress all memory of reading it. You’re probably aching to read the prologue, but we’ll get to that later. Here we see a tom called Rusty hunting a mouse. He is close to killing it, but fails. With the language Erin has used, what have we derived from it? Firstly, we could see his character traits. He seems that he likes being alone and likes new things, being in a foreign setting that’s so distant from the comfy twolegnest he calls his home. You can clearly see this as there are no other cats in his dream. His home is so artificial and tame and we can see he is really hateful to it, as he craves adventure. Take this excerpt:

“The forest had disappeared. He was inside a HOT and AIRLESS kitchen, curled in his bed. Moonlight filtered through the window, casting shadows on the smooth, hard floor. The noise had been the rattle of HARD, DRIED pellets of food as they were tipped into his dish. Rusty had been dreaming.”

I have the negative langiage in capitals. Yep, Rusty definitely hates it. All adjectives except the floor’s texture is negative. He pines for the forest scents (Pines? Forest? Alright, I’m off to hell for that joke.) and he wants the taste of a mouse.

Now let’s move a few pages ahead, to where the kitten fight starts. Despite Smudge sounding like he had the living daylights scared out of him when he heard Rusty was going to the forest and the promise of safety in his home, he goes *cough cough, deep voice* INTO THE WILD and meets Graypaw. Graypaw is more adept at fighting, however Rusty still gives a fight. After throwing himself on his belly and ejecting Graypaw, he doesn’t just turn tail as Graypaw starts to chase. Instead he turns back on him and kicks him back.

This gives us our final representation of who Rusty is at the end of Chapter 1. I think reading into the next pages is fruitless, so I’ll end off here. Rusty is an adventurous, brave, cat who hates artificialities and is not afraid for new experiences and can read opponents during fights. Many battles need prediction (including my personal hobby, pokemon competieve battling but that’s off topic) and Rusty nails this perfectly. Erin hooked millions of readers across the globe, including me, so good for you. You get a medal.