Chris Mccandless: A True Hero

Chris McCandless was a very unique individual. In Jon Krakauer’s book, Into the Wild, he tries his best to make sense of McCandless’ journey to the Alaskan wilderness. However, he never really figured out what McCandless’ purpose of the trip was. Looking at McCandless’ life throughout the book, I believe that Chris McCandless went on his journey to find happiness within his own life and did achieve it in the end.

In his novel, Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer establishes young Christopher McCandless as a heroic and brave figure. Krakauer supports his portrayal of Chris by utilizing a narrative form and focusing on the relatable, human aspects of Chris, and by contrasting his story with the cautionary tales that are scattered throughout the history of the Alaskan wilderness. The author’s purpose is to promote his own theories and opinions on the boy’s life and death in order to establish what he believes to be the truth. The author writes in a fond tone for aspiring wilderness explorers and their critics.

Introduction: Throughout the book of Into The Wild Chris McCandless is known to be a wacko reckless idiot, and is also known to be courageous and heroic. However does a courageous person go out into the wilderness knowing that the outcome will be fatal? People viewed him from different perspectives and also have broad range of opinions of this young man. Some deemed him to be incredibly dim-witted or a man that simply just followed his heart. Evidence shows that Chris McCandless is actually a mix of both. The first opinion that described McCandless was brainless, idiotic, and extremely foolish. Many passages from Into The Wild can support this outlook.

Heroes cannot be simply defined in a few words; being a hero is not being perfect, it is holding some specific, heroic qualities that people can look up to. Especially in the case of Chris McCandless, one must understand that he was a real person, a person that possessed certain negative aspects of human nature; he is not a figure in a fictional piece of work that can be sculpted to the idea of a hero. Using this definition of a hero, Chris McCandless does in fact, embody the idea of a hero as someone to be admired to a certain extent; he is a figure that has shown noble qualities and strength through adversity.

Chris McCandless was just a victim of his own obsession. The novel "Into The Wild" written by John Krakauer revealed the life of a young bright man named Chris McCandless who turned up dead in Alaska in summer 1992. In the novel, John Krakauer approached carefully McCandless's life without putting too much authorial judgment to the readers. Although Chris McCandless remained an elusive figure throughout the novel, I can see Chris McCandless as a dreamy young idealist who tries to follow his dream but failed because of his innocent mistake which prove to be fatal and irreversible. Still, Chris McCandless's courage and passion was something that we should all be proud of.

The story of Chris McCandless has become a pop culture phenomenon. Many are fascinated by his desire to abandon his family and society and “walk into the wild” (Krakauer 69). Newscasts, magazine articles, movies, and books have tried to define what motivated him to give up everything for his Alaskan odyssey; however, the answers died with McCandless. People make assumptions about him without knowing his entire story. McCandless chose to do the unconventional, making people think he was either foolish or brave and determined, but ultimately he was selfish for doing what he did.

Who influenced the other party more? Chris or the people he met along his journey? Without any money, or material objects Chris was able to leave a lasting impact on the people he met on his journey to Alaska. In Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless is able to leave a greater influence on the people he met along his journey to Alaska rather than the impact they made on him.

The book about Chris McCandless’s journey into the Alaskan bush, Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, received a lot of criticism about Chris being foolish for being unprepared. From the articles that I have read, most of the sources do believe that he was poorly prepared for his journey. But there are a few people who believe he was prepared mentally, and an even smaller amount believe he was fully prepared. I believe that Chris only knew what he was doing mentally. He did not have the correct tools or the developed skills to survive, for an extended period of time in the wild. But, he did know what he was about to get himself into. He planned out the trip and knew exactly what his risk factors were. Chris McCandless was either prepared

In what could have been Chris McCandless’s last contact with humanity he tells his new comrade, Wayne Westerberg, “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t hear from me again I want you to know you are a great man. I now walk into the wild” (Krakauer 3). For 112 days Chris lived off the harsh Alaskan land. For anyone who is brave enough to travel on the stampede trail and cross the treacherous Teklanika River you will come across the Fairbanks City Transit System Bus 142. Once a backcountry shelter for hunters, trappers, ranger patrols, and for a short time Chris McCandless, Bus 142 now serves as a memorial for Chris McCandless. Travelers will make the trip to witness the basic resources Chris had at hand and the courage it took to

Once deciding that he would not bring all the required equipment, it took many people scolding him before he even considered letting other people assist him. McCandless set out on the journey alone, and wanted to prove to himself that he could in fact make it alone in the wilderness. This is one of Chris’ critical faults. Too proud to admit defeat, Chris only lets others help him when in dire circumstances, eventually accepting clothes and other supplies from friends. At the end of his life, a very gaunt Chris finds it increasingly difficult to find game and records how butchering is “extremely difficult” (166). If Chris was adequately prepared for his trip, he would have taken th steps to learn these skills, and may not have resorted to the seeds that killed him. Another crucial mistake made by McCandless was not accounting for when he would not be able to get game. He went into the wild with a small bag of rice and the “heaviest item in his half-full backpack was his library” (162). While it is extremely difficult to read the last chapter of the book without feeling compassion and admiration for Chris, his death could have easily been prevented. His complacency towards “the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild” proved to be his biggest mistake (9).

No matter who or where you are, never go into the wilderness without the proper supplies. In April 1992, Christopher McCandless did one thing that would cost him his life. He set off into the wilderness of the Denali National Park declining any help and without the proper supplies, never to return back home. There are many different views about Christopher McCandless; some believe he was a hero for what he had done, and others believe he was idiot and just wanted to go die in the wilderness. Christopher McCandless was an American hiker who left his family after he graduated from Emory University.

In the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, Krakauer writes about Christopher McCandless, a young man who drops everything in his life to go travel throughout the states and end up in Alaska to find the truth to his questions. But did Chris find the truth he desperately desired? Some would say that McCandless did, other would say that he has wasted his time and was being ignorant and stupid. I agree with the author, Jon Krakauer, that Christopher McCandless was not a crazy lunatic, a sociopath, or an outcast because he had made lots of friends while traveling, but there were times when Chris was incompetent, even though he managed to stay alive for quite awhile. Christopher McCandless had a pretty normal childhood.

Christopher McCandless may be one of the most intriguing characters in nonfiction literature. In Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless gives up all of his worldly possessions in order to move to Alaska and travel alone into the wilderness. Chris seemed to lead a very privileged life, as he came from a fairly well off family. Chris was intelligent, having graduated from Emory University with a degree in anthropology and history. There is much ambiguity as to why Chris suddenly decides to leave his family behind and travel by himself -- although it is clear that Chris’s initial belief was that the best way to live life was alone, surrounded by nature. The overarching question is whether Chris intentionally tried to kill himself when he traveled alone into the heart of Alaska. Those who believe he did contend that he did not make enough of an effort to extract himself from the negative situations in which he found himself. They argue that Chris felt that he was betrayed by his father, and that he tries to kill himself in order to get away from his family as a whole. Yet Chris McCandless did not in fact have a death wish, and his death was the result of his miscalculating how difficult living in the wild would actually be. This resulted from Chris’s excessive pride. His main motivation to go into the wild was to run far away from his family -- who by blinding him, indirectly caused him to miscalculate.

Chris McCandless was a young man from a wealthy family , he had a serious idea about finding inner happiness. To do so he believed he had to hitchhike across the country with nothing but the clothes on his back, he burned his money, ditched his car, and abandoned his parents. The question we ask now after reviewing the life of McCandless’s was this a selfish move by Chris? Yes, Chris was selfish and ignorant when he left on a trek across the country including Alaska. The definition of selfish is lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure, Chris abandoned his family, and left them in a worse state than they were before, so he could try and find a new meaning for his life which in turn resulted in his death. When Chris’s name is brought up often so is John muir, a famous explorer and nicknamed “the father of National Parks”. Chris did nothing of the sorts, he left an inconsistent diary and a few pictures, the comparison of the two is unfair towards Muir. Although Chris did have a good relationship with his parents he took a very extreme step in trying to “fix” the issue.

Another character of literature who demonstrated these traits of Transcendentalism was named Chris McCandless. His incredible journey was described throughout Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, in which he trekked westward across the United States on a solo journey. Chris’s journey met an abrupt end when he hitchhiked his way into the Alaskan wilderness, where he attempted to live amongst the frontier. It was here that he died in 1992 due to starvation. However, this journey cemented Chris’s legacy as a Transcendentalist. Chris McCandless can be identified as a Transcendentalist due to the fact that he had an incredibly strong bond with nature, learned from past philosophers, spread his ideas to various strangers, as well as demonstrated self-reliance and nonconformity by embarking on his odyssey across America.