Analysis: Chris Mccandless

Society is Evil

“To conquer without danger is to conquer without glory.” (Pierre Corniell) Pierre’s stated quote expresses that there is no point of executing a hard task, any task at that matter, if there is no challenge involved. In another sense, Pierre was describing a point of view in which he is biased towards the idea that everything that you do in life should be earned and not given. Corniell explicitly depicts that hazard and or obstacles are the motivation behind everything throughout life. His point of view was, and still is an extensively accepted idea throughout the world today. A young boy, 24, named Chris McCandless also had a similar mindset. Chris grew up in an upper-middle class home, and while attending school, maintained

For Example, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” (Emerson 1) This quote for example shows just how much hatred that Ralph had against the ideals of society. Emerson is a transcendentalist which makes this biased, but since he has such a large following, he had a bigger platform to inspire and inform the people of the wrong doing of society. The quote metaphorically states that society takes away individualism instead of trying to keep it alive. Individualism is never praised, and that is why he thinks society is unnecessary and evil in a sense. Chris was obviously directly inspired from this author, allowing them to have many of the same and or similar ideals about society and what harm it causes on its civilians. McCandless was inspired to do something, but instead of announcing publicly to a wide array of people, he did things in a more naturalist way. He had decided to just plainly leave society in order to follow these beliefs. He wanted to see his true self without the influence of mainstream society. An example of this is, “Water surged across the once-dry floor of the sink, inundating farms and settlements, eventually drowning four hundred square miles of desert and giving birth to a land-locked ocean” (qtd by Krakauer 49). This quote claims that nature always takes over. This plays a role in what Emerson believed because both knew that nature topped anything else in this world. Society has broken nature down, but anything broken can be fixed. This is one reason that McCandless was justified in his actions and thoughts, he was not the only one. Another author named Walt Whitman had also shared similar ideals as both men, Emerson and