It is like a tag on a shirt that keeps bothering your tender skin, it is the reason why you rip the tag off and make your own choices while walking into the unknown land of the wilderness, striving for the adventure that has dire consequences if executed improperly. Walking the unknown land of Hades abyss might have taken the sensitive life of one man, but it was done in a blaze of glory with no regrets. This man of course is Christopher McCandless in the book, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is based on a true story. In the book, McCandless strives for the cold Alaskan journey into the wild to satisfy his final thirst for the wilderness but tragedy strikes and it ends by him losing the most valuable thing to him, his life. Chris McCandless had exceptional reasons for vacating the life he lived which are also justified; he was also was not foolish for leaving that life and the outcome of his journey was a triumph and not a tragedy.
McCandless had exceptional reasons for leaving home and taking on the life of a homeless person living in the wild. McCandless wanted to experience this type of individuality and to experience the life that Henry David Thoreau once lived, however there where more reasons on why he ultimately left home and decided to live the life of a free man. In the book, McKinney explains that Chris was convinced that humans had grown into inferior people and that it was his goal to return to the natural state of being a human (74). He also continued to say that Chris was experiencing what ancient civilizations experienced and that by the end of his lifestyle he had incorporated elements of Neolithic (74). This reveals his intensions from the beginning of his state of being an ultimately the beginning of his un...
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... the milky crisp mountains of Alaska, it was everything he imagined it to be. However his burgeoning haplessness ended in the tragedy of his death. Though he abated in a world of reverie, he found enough energy to say his impeccable goodbyes to his loved ones and family. McCandless like a judge in the Supreme Court of the United States was justified in the absence of attending his life with his family and was not a fool for doing so. Though his incredible journey ended in demise, it was a feat for him and all of those who loved him. To quote Henry David Thoreau , “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Works Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. United States. Villard Books, 1996. Print
Chris McCandless was a young man who did everything in his power to try and represent that freedom he was searching for. McCandless had everything before we went out but he decided to go out and travel by choice. He was considered a selfish man because when someone offered him to help him he rejects it in a nice way since we wants to do things himself. In the book Into the wild he states that,"You don't need to worry about me. I have a college education. I'm not destitute. I'm living like this by choice."
Chris McCandless, the young man that Jon Krakauer writes about in Into The Wild, made the decision to drop everything and walk out of civilization. That is one of the big question here, was Chris a reckless idiot For dropping everything and only relying on what nature offered. This is what a lot of people seem to talk about when they talk about Chris McCandless. There are many people who think that Chris McCandless was a reckless idiot who was mentally ill, or something else was wrong with Chris. It seems that almost everybody that met Chris thought maybe Chris was crazy or had problems. Here are just a few things that people said about Chris and his state of mind. “Zarza admits saying, "he was always going on about trees and nature and
Throughout Into the Wild, Krakauer portrays Christopher McCandless as an infallibly eager young man hoping to distance himself from the society he so obviously loathes, to "live off the land," entirely independent of a world which has "conditioned [itself] to a life of security." Chris, contrarily to this depiction, is disparagingly viewed by some as a "reckless idiot" who lacked the sense he needed to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. This derogatory assessment of Chris's mindset is representative of the society he hopes to escape and contains all the ignorance that causes him to feel this way. Nevertheless, he is misjudged by these critics, allowing Krakauer to hold the more accurate interpretation of Chris's character, his goals, and his accomplishments.
Thoreau went into the woods for many different reasons than McCandless. He decided to live in the woods so he could live deliberately. He desired to learn what life had to teach him and face only the essential facts of life without any other distractions. Going into the woods, would let him know that he had lived, so when he died, he wouldn’t regret never fully living. He wanted to figure out if this life in nature was mean or sublime. If it was mean, he hoped to publish his findings to the world, but if it was sublime, he would just know this knowledge and use it for his next excursion. Thoreau heavily believed in simplicity. He felt everything should be simplified, and that people were squandered by details. As he said, “ Simplicity, simplicity,
Chris McCandless does not wish to follow defined life structure that society enforces to simply be alive, instead, he chooses to take a seek a path to live a life with purpose. Such an eagerness to seek detachment from what is expected by society, is enforced by not only McCandless but also Thoreau. A primary factor resembling this, is McCandless’ view that many people “live within unhappy circumstances...yet will not change…they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism...damaging to the adventurous spirit(40).” The detesting tone risen through the confliction of “unhappy circumstances” and “damage,” to “safety, conformity and conservation,” emphasis his will to separate from a lifestyle lacking change. This is done
Chris McCandless is regarded as being something as a spiritual figure almost as a cult hero, some call him a disillusioned fool, some call him a great adventurer, and the debate still continues. As Matthew Power calls in his article, an article where he tells the story of McCandless,“The debate falls into two camps: Krakauer's visionary seeker, the tragic hero who dared to live the unmediated life he had dreamed of and died trying; or, as many Alaskans see it, the unprepared fool, a greenhorn who had fundamentally misjudged the wilderness he'd wanted so desperately to commune with.” Like so many stories covering Christopher McCandless’ death, both ends of the argument are discussed in an unfavored manner in the hopes to help develop an opinion on the McCandless story. This open ended question can only be answered open-endedly based on what the readers base for themselves as covered stories intend. Like Power has done, ...
Throughout McCandless’s adventure in the Alaskan wild, he made a series of choices. His survival was made possible by his ability to adapt to harsh conditions. The fact that he survived all his ventures and hardships might have been due more to good fortune than his actual preparation and skills. It is theorized that it was his point to make the Alaska trip so difficult, and so barebones, that he wasn’t sure whether he would have been able to survive it or not. This journey, though reckless, makes his adventure into the Alaskan wild that much more admirable. For Chris to live a life with little to no material objects and survive on his own, in itself, is an act of extreme bravery and determination. Some may say that the
Chris’s mindset of living a very simplistic life is shown during his limited time with Jim Gallien. Jim notes that “Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice” and “Alex’s cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated” (Krakauer, 5). Nevertheless, Chris lets his hubris get the best of him by failing to realize that he would need waterproof boots if he wanted to go into a snow environment. Chris was about to enter into the Alaskan frontier with an extremely lousy set of equipment. Chris lets his arrogance and the anticipation of the wild get the best of him, causing him to have poor judgment in his decisions on what to bring with him into the wild. His egotistic personality ultimately led to his death in the cold and unrelenting frontier. Nevertheless, this was not Chris’s first failed attempt to live a transcendentalist lifestyle. “Will you come pick me up?” McCandless asked (Krakauer, 54). Chris was unsuccessful in his endeavor to become a hobo and travel all the way to Seattle and live a life there. Not even a full two months passed before Chris realized that living a life in Seattle that was of transcendent origin, was not just hard, but impossible. This display of him being overly confident in his abilities to live on his own was a build up to him believing he was well
Both Chris and Krakauer were at one time in their lives hunting for something in the uninhabited world. Krakauer advocates this argument in order to prove to the audience that McCandless was not crazy due to the fact that Krakauer himself was not. Krakauer learned from teammate Eric Hathaway, “On weekends, when his high school pals were attending ‘keggers’ and trying to sneak into Georgetown bars, McCandless would wander the seedier quarters of Washington, chatting with prostitutes and homeless people, buying them meals, earnestly suggesting way they might improve their lives” (113). This exposed that McCandless did have a sensitive personality, which can be maintained with reasonable evidence of his excursions to the weak parts of town. The author also utilized the rhetorical device of logos within the novel. Krakauer notes that Chris was an Emory graduate where he had been a colonist and editor for the school newspaper, and distinguished himself as a historian and anthropologist with a 3.72 GPA
He took everything in his life to the extreme. As stated earlier, “It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure….”(Krakauer 182). People want to live while their young, therefore they take risks. However, what McCandless did was more than just risk taking. He contained something along the lines of an excessive hubris. ‘“He didn’t think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge,” vocalizes Walt McCandless (Krakauer 109). Trudging into the vast Alaskan wilderness without proper provisions is taking the extreme too far. As Krakauer states, “...[Chris] was fully aware when he entered the brush that he he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error” (182). Only someone with an extensive hubris would commit an act so dangerous and be confident in their survival. Although he lent himself to a handful of stupid mistakes, McCandless was far from an idiot. Even though the extreme he took his Alaska adventure to was ill-advised, there is something about Chris that is almost admirable. Many people have dreams and passions that get shoved into an old chest and are never to be visited again. In today’s society it seems as though everyone is
Living in the wilderness is difficult, but understanding the meaning of such lifestyle is even more difficult. One of the Christopher’s admirable qualities was that he was well aware of what he was doing. He knew about the difficulties and dangers that he would face into the wilderness, and was mentally prepared for that. Author Jon Krakauer says that “McCandless was green, and he overestimated his resilience, but he was sufficiently skilled to last for sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of rice. And he was fully aware when he entered the bush that he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error. He knew precisely what was at stake” (182). McCandless was an educated youth, who loved nature and dreamed of living in the Alaskan wilderness. Although he ignored to take many necessary things with him on this
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
...elligence to help him last an extended period of time in the Alaskan wilderness. In truth, McCandless was someone who wanted to find himself. He wanted to get away from a life in which he could not find fulfilment, which is something many others would be able to relate to. Although most people would not go to such extremes to find fulfilment, everyone has a different way of finding happiness and going after what their heart truly desires. For McCandless, his desire was to live out in the wild. Unfortunately, this man of great character did not succeed in getting out alive. However, that does not change the fact that he tried. McCandless knew what he wanted for himself and he persisted, regardless of the obstacles he faced. He put an incredible amount of effort into accomplishing his goals and never gave up, and that is why Christopher McCandless is someone to admire.
Ultimate freedom is an odyssey everyone, at least once in their lifetime, tries to conquer. Chris McCandless did everything in his power to try and capture that freedom he was searching for. He ultimately gave up his own life during that quest. Did he find what he was searching for? We may never know. Very many people have diverse opinions on this character. Chris McCandless was not selfish. He was a young, well-educated boy. His parents handed him everything on a silver platter; he wanted to prove not only to himself but to everyone else he could do things on his own. His possessions did not define who he was as a person. He thought towards everyone else he was just another brick in the wall, a pretty rich boy, and that did not “fly” with him. He had to prove his worth.
Jon Krakauer, fascinated by a young man in April 1992 who hitchhiked to Alaska and lived alone in the wild for four months before his decomposed body was discovered, writes the story of Christopher McCandless, in his national bestseller: Into the Wild. McCandless was always a unique and intelligent boy who saw the world differently. Into the Wild explores all aspects of McCandless’s life in order to better understand the reason why a smart, social boy, from an upper class family would put himself in extraordinary peril by living off the land in the Alaskan Bush. McCandless represents the true tragic hero that Aristotle defined. Krakauer depicts McCandless as a tragic hero by detailing his unique and perhaps flawed views on society, his final demise in the Alaskan Bush, and his recognition of the truth, to reveal that pure happiness requires sharing it with others.