Chris Mccandless And The Journey Of Chris Mccandless

A young man, in his twenties, sets off into the wild completely disregarding his family and his past life and takes on a whole new personality. This perfectly explains Chris McCandless and the journey that he initially set out on. He was a young man seeking self-acceptance and peace, and he looked for it in all of the different places that he visited. Visiting these places made Chis more and more hungry for a challenge. He planned on leaving the comfort of a home and setting out into the Alaskan wilderness, where he would eventually die. Many wonder what lead McCandless to his death and there are many different theories. Chris McCandless was motivated by guilt to go to Alaska, and although he died of starvation, his father’s abusive nature
Revealed in Return to the Wild (PBS Documentary), it was said that his mother often told him and his sister “when I got pregnant with Chris I got stuck with their father”. Given this verbal conformation that he was the reason for his mother’s suffering McCandless had an obvious hatred towards his parents. In a letter to his sister, Carine, shown in the film Return to the Wild (PBS Documentary), McCandless said that one of his goals was to punish and hurt his parents, he wanted to act as he had divorced his parents. This guilt that his parents bestowed upon him lead him to leave his home, change his name, and run away from reality. He was seeking a life away from the toxic household that he lived in and was tormented in every day. He got the idea to set off into the wilderness because whenever his family went out on camping trips there was no fighting and it was peaceful for them. McCandless was seeking this peace and tranquility and he wanted to do it alone so that he could find himself through this
McCandless didn’t even write to his mother and father throughout this long trip. He did write to Jan Burres, a friend he met on his journey, saying “Hey guys! This is the last communication you shall receive from me. I now walk out to live amongst the wild.” (Krakauer 69). What they don’t take into account is the events that caused him to leave his family and go into the wild. Ultimately McCandless chose to die of starvation rather than killing himself. It is believed that he did this because he thought that someone might come and help him and he could go back to a loving family that showed him the respect and care that his other family had lacked. At the end of the film Into the Wild (Sean Penn) they show McCandless, about to take his last breath, running into his parent’s arms when he came home from his long journey, then it goes back to McCandless’s face and he starts screaming. This shows that he didn’t want to go back to them, but he wanted to go back to a different family who appreciated