Analysis Of Chris Mccandless In Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

“I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters” (Krakauer 7). In Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, one of the key themes is the fact that the main character, Chris McCandless, values his principles more than his own family, possessions, or the people he cares about. He shows this in many ways throughout the novel and Krakauer hints on every single one. Several people McCandless met on his trek admired his principles and it led them to admire him. He is very anti-materialistic and shows this quality by giving the rest of his college fund to a charity fighting for world hunger. In Solitude, Thoreau writes about how society is insignificant and chooses to exchange it for a society of nature. This can be related to McCandless because Thoreau is valuing his principles over people because he believes society is insignificant, just like McCandless. In Werner Herzog’s film Grizzly Man, a man named Timothy Treadwell ventures off into the wild to provoke grizzly bears. Timothy Treadwell can be seen as someone who values his principles over people in a way that he leaves everyone behind and risks his life for his own good. He chooses to be potentially killed by grizzly bears, more than his own life. The reader

Thoreau points this out in his piece and the readers can infer that it merges into Chris’s view of society and his adherence to principles. “We are subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me” (Thoreau Solitude 51). Like Thoreau, Chris is not interested in being subject to other people’s demands, he mostly relies on himself throughout his entire journey to the wilderness and so does Thoreau. Thoreau and Chris are also similar in ways that they both want to be left alone, although Chris becomes close to many people throughout the novel he still chooses