Into the wild

In April of 1992, Christopher Johnson McCandless disappeared without so much as a phone call or letter to his friends or family explaining his intentions or his whereabouts. He had just graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia before the mysterious disappearance which left his family heartbroken and worried. Soon, though, they received word about what had happened; Chris began his longdesired venture to Alaska which, in the end, would eventually lead to his death. The tale of Chris’s escapade across the United States of America and eventual demise has long struck the emotions of Alaskans and explorers who have heard it, though the reactions vary. Some of them view Chris’s actions as arrogant, selfish, and stupid; arrogant for thinking he could survive in such extremeconditions, selfish for ignoring the feelings of his friends and family when he left suddenly, and stupid for being quite unprepared in his supplies. Others, however, perceive his decision as admirable and beautiful, claiming that he survived longer than he should have and that it was his love for nature’s essence and adventure that stimulated his seemingly idealistic optimism. The world will probablynever fully understand what went through the mind of McCandless on the day he set out on his journey to unknown destinations. Based upon the evidence presented by Jon Krakauer in his narrative, Into the Wild, however, it is quite evident that Chris’s enthusiasm for such a grueling campaign was merely a product of his traditional admiration for nature and adventure and his wish to be independent fromtoday’s materialistic society.
Chris was always a smart, hard-working student who excelled in both academics and athletics. He always made good grades and tried to avoid the material realities of the typical popularity-driven hierarchy in school. Reading was a hobby of his, engulfing himself in novels by influential writers like Leo Tolstoy, Jack London, and Henry David Thoreau. The topicsdiscussed in these books “were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often” (66). Qualities like chastity, serenity, morality, purity, and beauty in relation to life and nature were very important values to which Chris was devoted. In a novel called Walden by Henry David Thoreau, which was found in the small bus Chris had resided in while living in the Alaskan bush, “McCandless circled‘Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeeded it.’” This statement proved to be a heavy influence in Chris’s life, because, as Krakauer indicates, Thoreau “was a lifelong virgin” and “there is little evidence” to suggest Chris was not practicing the same discipline (65, 66). Krakauer sums up this comparison:McCandless’s apparent sexual innocence, however, is a corollary of a personality type that our culture purports to admire, at least in the case of its more famous adherents . . . Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. (66)
These deep thinking novelists, however, were not the only attributes influencingChris’s appreciation for a morally pure way of life; they simply fueled a fire that had been burning for years. This love was influenced by a hatred; Chris’s hatred for his parents’ way of life.
Chris’s parents, Walt and Billie, both work long hours to maintain their upper middle class status and to provide a somewhat luxurious lifestyle for Chris and his sister Carine, an idea Chrisscorned upon. He was ashamed of their “hypocrisy” and “materialistic existence.” (64) Probably one of the more prominent conflicts in Chris’s complex existence, however, was the ongoing struggle between him and his father. Walt McCandless was a stubborn authoritarian and Chris, who was equally stubborn, resented the restrictions placed upon him by his father, or anyone, for that matter. “Given...