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Christopher Mccandless: A Hero

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Danieh Shehadeh
Professor Falloon
ENGWR 101
July 30, 2015
Essay #4

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a story about a young man named Christopher McCandless who decided to give everything in his life up and venture out to the wilderness of Alaska. He wasn't content with his life. His mission was to truly find himself so he abandoned his family and society to do so. He ended up living 112 days alone in the wilderness of Alaska until he died of starvation. Many people would say the Christopher McCandless was a hero for going against society's norms to find himself, but I believe that he was not a hero and that he was foolish. He abandoned his responsibilities, never told his family his plans of leaving to Alaska and burned his money; these are …show more content…

A hero would have faced their responsibilities instead of run away from them. Christopher graduated from one of the best universities in the America with a bachelor degree double majoring in Anthropology and History. He saw his time in college as "an absurd and onerous duty." (22) He could have done great things with what he studied and could have helped find himself in society but instead of taking a bit of a break and then working with his degrees, he gave up everything in his life because believed he could truly find himself without taking the things he needed to help him survive. He didn't have the right equipment he needed to live in the wilderness of cold Alaska or food; he had only brought a bag of rice which doesn't last very …show more content…

“Then, in a gesture that would have done both Thoreau and Tolstoy proud, he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand—apathetic little stack of ones and fives and twenties—and put a match to it” (p29). He did this in a way to impress Thoreau and Tolstoy because they didn't care for money so he is throwing something away that he needs to live normally in society. He burned the money to have a fresh start and not have anything tie him down to society; yet after he burned the money he had to get a job for money which is a part of society he wanted to escape from. This makes Christopher foolish because if he had really thought it through he wouldn't have burned the money and wouldn't have needed to get a job during the adventure he wanted to go

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