"Wild" Blog Entries: Prologue and Chapter 1

Prologue:
  Cheryl Strayed's main purpose for including the prologue is to prepare the reader for what the rest of the story is going to be about: her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail and her reasons for doing so. She begins the prologue by describing what she saw whilst atop a mountain slope: "The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California" (Strayed, 3). This gives the audience a hint as to what is going to happen in later chapters. The Prologue is also important to read because it tells the reader the reasons behind Strayed's decision to make the hike. She describes how "[i]n the years before I pitched my boot over the edge of that mountain, I'd been pitching myself over the edge too...until at last I found myself, bootless, in the summer of 1995, not so much loose in the world as bound to it" (Strayed, 4). In context, Strayed just described how her father and stepfather had abandoned her, her mother had died, she had lost contact with her siblings, and her marriage was failing. All of these reasons put together, she explains, were why she decided to make this hike. I think this book is going to be a book of self-discovery and healing, while making a very strenuous hike.

Chapter One:
   The section that emotionally affected me the most was the very last section of the chapter, where Strayed dreams of murdering her mother and wishes that she could have been with her when she died. She writes: "Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her when she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end" (Strayed, 27). This part was extremely emotional, as it shows just how much Strayed is grieving over the loss of her mother. The guilt she feels about not being with her mother when she died is very evident. The horrifying nightmares that she describes add even more to her emotional turmoil, which she shares with the reader through her descriptive words. I could feel the pain and sadness that Strayed was feeling in this moment in time. This section, in my opinion, was the most emotional, due to the memories she shares and the descriptive language she uses.