Compare And Contrast Chris Mccandless And Going Into The Wild

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,

It originally was because he wanted to cut ties with his family. He wasn’t very fond of his dad, because he cheated on his mom with his ex-wife even after he was born. Once Chris learned this about his dad, he never thought of him the same again. He also wanted to show that he could survive by himself without the help of others. To show that, he decided to go into the woods with almost nothing and no one, and try to survive. He also felt that adventure was extremely important. In a letter to Franz, he said, “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure”(Thoreau 57). He shows how important it is to take risks and adventure by going into the woods. Also, in the same letter to Franz, he explains how he thinks that people live within their comfort zones, and don’t take any risks and how much that dampens adventure. When living in your comfort zone, you can’t have any adventure, so by going on this adventure into the woods, he shows how he isn’t living in his comfort zone. He didn’t want to focus on the nature around him like Thoreau, he wanted to focus and explore his own

As stated before, Chris’s main reason for going into the woods was so he could live independently and find himself. What he brought with him reflected that. Going into the woods, he had a backpack worth of stuff, and the only food was a ten pound bag of rice, two sandwiches, and a bag of corn chips. If he didn’t catch a ride with Gallien, he wouldn’t even have the sandwiches and the bag of chips. From the beginning, he knew he was going to rely on nature to survive. Instead of observing nature and getting food from outside the woods like Thoreau, he was only surviving off of the nature around him. If he didn’t catch any game, he would have little to no food. As his dad had said, “ Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run” (Krakaeur 32). Before even going on this trip, he was a minimalist. He only took what he needed. So before going on this trip, he only took what he thought he would need, which was a very little amount of items. He was the kind of person that had to live out his beliefs, so in doing that, he went to the woods to find himself with almost nothing except for one bag on his