Analysis Of Chris Mccandless 'Into The Wild'

Chris McCandless sought to find his happiness in the wilderness. Krakauer explains why and how McCandless went on the dangerous journey to Alaska in the novel, Into the Wild. Although many readers have thought he was unprepared and mentally ill, McCandless believed that society restricted people from understanding themselves. People are so focused in a lifestyle where they get an education, find a career and get a job from there. McCandless believed humans are focused on social status that they have forgotten to live without society. McCandless is a pilgrim in that he wanders from place to place in order to avoid society. Throughout his journey, he follows three main Transcendentalist ideals, a simplistic lifestyle, the disconnection of society,

McCandless faithfully uses this ideal by not accepting materialistic items from the people he had met. McCandless planned to rely on his Datsun to take him from place to place during his travels, but rather than feeling upset that his car was stuck after a flash flood, “He saw the flash flood as an opportunity to shed unnecessary baggage....he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand...and put a match to it. One hundred twenty-three dollars in legal tender was promptly reduced to ash and smoke” (29). McCandless burned his money to symbolize a transcendentalist life in which money is worthless in the wilderness. Although McCandless seemed to have treasured his Datsun, he did not hesitate to abandon it, leaving several materialistic items such as a car battery, a guitar, and a bag of clothes. The reason he did not hesitate to abandon his car and demolish the rest of the money he had was because it gave him an opportunity to live a more minimalistic lifestyle. Another encounter of his continual faith to a minimalistic lifestyle was when Jan Burres, a dear friend whom McCandless had met during his trip, urges him to take some warm clothes to wear in Alaska, “'but the day after he left, I found most of it in the van. He's pulled it out of his pack when we weren't looking and hid it up under the seat'” (46). McCandless shows beyond doubt that even his valued friends cannot influence

Traveling to Mexico and back into California, McCandless decides to hibernate in Las Vegas in order to save money to buy fundamental needs and wait for a safer season to travel to Alaska. The problem was that he continued to stick to his ideals such as not wearing socks with shoes because he believed that socks were not basic needs. After having worked at McDonald's for months, “McCandless explained to Burres that he’d grown tired of punching a clock, tired of the ‘plastic people’ he worked with, and decided to get the hell out of town” (43). McCandless shows that he did not like being controlled by others and returned to traveling freely. Carine McCandless shields the negativity of her brother being anti social by saying, “‘He was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial -- he always had friends, and everybody liked him -- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.’ (107) This shows that McCandless had always enjoyed being isolated; this trait shows that he values the ideal of trivializing human contact. Traveling with a sack of books, he spends most of his time reading and noting books by Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, and Henry David Thoreau. These authors write about nature and their ideals which greatly influence McCandless. McCandless is a typical