Chris Mccandless Become Lost In The Wild Analysis

Chris Mccandless was a smart, able and talented guy, he wanted to break away from society, live off the land and survive on his own, and find himself. He did, but at the cost of his life, and with one simple mistake he died in the Alaskan wilderness. Mccandless hoped to gain one thing from his life in the brush, and that was autonomy, a sense that he, Christopher Mccandless, could survive, all by himself in the wilds of America. One of his goals, in his search for the self, was to “Become Lost in The Wild” (163) and live off whatever kind of lands he found himself in. Chris accomplished this in his 2 years among strangers, tramps, and eventually new friends. He ventured across America in various wilds, societies, and

Mccandless’ need for autonomy led him to adventure, nature, the wild, a sadly dangerous passion. “One suspects that Muir (John Muir) wouldn’t have thought Mccandless terribly odd or incomprehensible.” (183). If Mccandless would’ve been cool in Muir’s book, then he must've been a pretty free spirit. Mccandless wasn’t just a man of nature but a student of reason; he was a college graduate, a competent being, a smart, truly, capable kid. “The more they talked, the less Alex struck Galien as a nutcase. He was congenial and seemed well educated.” (5). Chris was intelligent, especially for a hitchhiker. Mccandless was a transcendentalist, inside and out, with a damn good head on his

Chris was on the road, in the wild living like a true nomad, for nearly 2 years. “… he’d subsided for more than a month beside the gulf of California on 5 pounds of rice, and a bounty of fish caught…” (182). Mccandless had survived in many places, and even, at the end of his journey, in Alaska for 3 months. He had proven to the world, and more importantly himself, that his home was truly, the road. He was done. “Satisfied, apparently with what he had learned during his two months of solitary life in the wild, Mccandless decided to return to civilization.” (168). Mccandless had finished his quest, but sadly for him he died for a simple, unforgiving mistake. The one mistake that truly killed Chris was so: “When Mccandless tried to walk out of the bush…the basket was in the same as it is now on his side of the canyon…crossing the Teklanika to safety would have been a trivial matter. Because he had no topographic map, however, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close.” (174). Chris found what he was looking for out there, but he died for it