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The life of chris mccandless
The journey of chris mccandless
The journey of chris mccandless
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In a modest South Dakota town called Carthage, Wayne Westerberg portrays Chris McCandless to Jon Krakauer, who the peruser knows has come to talk with him about McCandless. Krakauer relates that Westerberg, at that point supervising a grain collect in Montana, got McCandless while he was bumming a ride. Westerberg recollects that him as eager and good looking, with a touchy face and a lean body. He says that ladies would likely have discovered him appealing, yet additionally portrays his face as exchanging amongst enlivened and slack. Alex was connecting with and amicable. Westerberg chose to give him a chance to rest in his trailer overnight when it began to rain. McCandless remained for three days. Westerberg at that point advised McCandless to come to South Dakota for an occupation at whatever point he required. McCandless arrived fourteen days after the fact, and Westerberg …show more content…
McCandless records a duplicate of War and Peace to Westerberg before leaving, encouraging him to "tune in to Pierre," an altruist and dissident in the novel. Starting now and into the foreseeable future, McCandless tells individuals he is from South Dakota. Krakauer relates that McCandless really experienced childhood in Annandale, Virginia in an upper white collar class family unit. His dad, Walt McCandless, was an aviation design specialist; Chris' mom, Billie, was his business accomplice. Chris went to Emory University in Georgia, where he altered the understudy daily paper and rejected Phi Beta Kappa Honors on rule. After graduation, he declined his folks' offer to pay for graduate school and also their offer to get him an auto utilizing the $24,000 staying in his school support. Rather, Krakauer composes, McCandless chose to give the greater part of the cash to the philanthropy
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.
Chris McCandless adheres to the tenet of individual supremacy by throwing away and keeping himself far from wealth. He attempts this tremendous feat by donating most of his money and expunging the rest by burning it. He may break the law in this action, but is reveals a great deal about his character: that he cares about people but also that money holds no power in his life. Venturing into the Alaskan wilderness extemporaneously, McCandless also breaks the bonds of wealth by staying away from it. His supplies—“cheap leather hiking boots, … only [a] .22 caliber [rifle]; a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou…. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass”—allowed h...
Christopher McCandless was a hurt soul indeed. He used his knowledge of freedom and spirituality that he saw in author’s writings to take it out of context and explore the wilderness on his own. Seeking a way out of his unfortunate hardship in a dysfunctional family he set out to achieve living on his own within his own thoughts in the Alaskan wilderness. I believe that Chris McCandless was crazy, and he was somewhat unaware in the reality of his decisions. Chris was bright yet made bad decisions, he could make friends easily, but left impressions on them, and he didn’t know enough about living in the wild which would ultimately cause his death.
McCandless wanted to escape his life full of expectations. McCandless followed under his parents rule until he graduated from Emroy University. After he graduated, Walt and Billie felt that Chris should attend law school. “He had spent the previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college. At long last he was encumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence” (Krakauer 22). McCandless feels that he is escaping a material world. McCandless took courage to go against what his parents wanted for
Was he a reckless idiot? That is the big question. This is what people always 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. Pg 40 Zarza admits saying, "he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws. Pg 42 Charlie said, "seemed like a kid who was looking for something." Pg 45 Burres said "I thought Alex had lost his mind when he told us about his 'great Alaskan odyssey, ' as he called it."
Christopher McCandless came from a rich suburb of Washington D.C. He excelled in school and had been an outstanding athlete. He graduated with honors from Emory University in the summer of 1990, and soon after he dropped out of sight. He changed his name from Chris to Alex, gave his twenty-four-thousand dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, and burned all of the cash in his wallet. He desired to live off of the land and traveled across North America.
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
Chris McCandless, the main character of “Into the wild” was angered by his father’s infidelity and bigamy. As a result, Chris McCandless wanted to separate himself from his family and he begins a spiritual adventure to search for his identity. Chris McCandless isolates himself physically and emotionally to find freedom and peace by adventuring into the wild. Therefore, McCandless escapes from Emory University and immediately flees his dull and predictable life, heading west without a word to his family. Although, McCandless journey ends in a tragic ending, he fulfilled his ambition by pursuing his ambition and inner peace. In conclusion, McCandless journey was both a search for inner peace and transition to maturity.
Before going to Alaska, Chris McCandless had failed to communicate with his family while on his journey; I believe this was Chris’s biggest mistake. Chris spent time with people in different parts of the nation while hitchhiking, most of them whom figured out that McCandless kept a part of him “hidden”. In chapter three, it was stated that Chris stayed with a man named Wayne Westerberg in South Dakota. Although Westerberg was not seen too often throughout the story, nevertheless he was an important character. Introducing himself as Alex, McCandless was in Westerberg’s company for quite some time: sometimes for a few days, other times for several weeks. Westerberg first realized the truth about Chris when he discovered his tax papers, which stated that “McCandless’s real name was Chris, not Alex.” Wayne further on claims that it was obvious that “something wasn’t right between him and his family” (Krakauer 18). Further in the book, Westerberg concluded with the fact that Chris had not spoken to his family “for all that time, treating them like dirt” (Krakauer 64). Westerberg concluded with the fact that during the time he spent with Chris, McCandless neither mentioned his
In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, he retells the story of a young man named Chris McCandless by putting together interviews, speaking with people who knew him, and using letters he writes to his companions. Chris McCandless also known as Alexander Supertramp is a bright young man and after graduating from Emory University with all honors, he abandons most of his possessions and travels around the west, making long lasting impact on whomever he meets. He then hitchhikes to Alaska where he is found dead. In chapter 14 and 15, both named “Stikine Ice Cap”, Jon Krakauer interrupts the boy's story and shares his anecdote of going to Alaska to climb a dangerous mountain called the Devils Thumb. Krakaure’s purpose is to refute the argument that McCandless is mentally ill because many others, like Krakauer have tried to “go into the wild” but they are lucky to survive unlike McCandless. While describing his climb, Krakauer exhibits through the descriptions of and uncertainty about personal relationships.
Chris McCandless lived a life in which he disgusted by human civilization, and left it, eventually being led to his death in Alaska. McCandless entered the Alaskan wilderness severely unprepared, a brutal error that cost him his life. In the novel, Into the Wild by John Krakauer, Chris glances into his mindset by they way of his journal, history, and analysis of his life reveals that Chris McCandless as an arrogant and judgemental narcissist, while not mentally unstable, had a condescending attitude towards society and perished not only from his reckless stupidity but also from his unparalleled ego. Chris McCandless was immune to love and had an obsession with nature and society, him showing characteristics that created the appearance of McCandless
Turning his back on society, Chris McCandless throws away materialistic comfort and immerses himself in the values he believes to be important and pursues the ideals that he feels are worthwhile. He branches away from his family, friends, school and entirely abandons his identity as Christopher McCandless and creates a new one as Alexander Supertramp. His actions, often considered to be selfish and cruel, might have been necessary and almost noble change for him. By not even communicating with his sister, Carine, the one person to whom he was quite close to, Chris makes it quite obvious that he does not want to be found. Before, Chris had pushed himself through university, academically and physically as a top student and athlete and later on his journey, pushes himself to be completely independent because, “…it was important for him to see how independent he could be” (Krakauer 125). This quote illustrates the side of Chris that challenges himself to simply challenge himself— not a result of his romantic infatuation for self ...
Krakauer states, “McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well-relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it” (55). This had also occurred a few months prior in Niland Slabs, where he met Burres and Tracy. He had made friends there, and Tracy had developed feelings for him, but he rebuffed any of her advancements; he didn’t want to get involved with others, not after having left home for his journey. To him, having had friends and family that he left behind, he loved people, but he didn’t want to be close to them in any way other than purely being around them. Growing up with a difficult family relationship, such as McCandles’s, which caused him to push people away; it’s easy to relate to him in that aspect.
In the life of McCandless, he went to college, and graduated with a GPA of 3.72. He was given a large amount of cash for college purposes, and he donated that. He had an offer of a new car for himself from his parents. He had a clear path for himself that was set by his lo...
Some believe that Walter, McCandless’ dad, affair is what drove McCandless to his journey to the wild but during his journey he met a man who represented a father figure but was the opposite of his actual father. This man was Wayne Westerberg, grain elevator operator. Westerberg gave McCa...