Chris Mccandless 'Happiness Is Only Real When Shared'

Into The Wild, based on a true story, is about Chris McCandless, an Emory University top student graduate and athlete, who abandons his possessions, gave away his money to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness, encountering many people who reshape his whole life. His goal in the wilderness was to spend time with nature, with ‘real’ existence, away from the trappings of the modern world. The author’s first description of him was how he was arrogant and how he didn’t really fit with the modern world. On his journey, he went on a path of self-discovery, to examine and appreciate the world around him and to reflect on and heal from his troubled childhood and parents dirty and abusive relationship. He eventually starves to death in his epic journey realizing that “Happiness is only real when shared”.

This book was made to portray the main character, Chris McCandless, about his conflict with human relations. Chris McCandless was, “thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well-relieved that he had again

It was a third person story told by the author himself and only himself. For example, when he says “Roman, Andrew, and I stay up well past midnight, trying to make sense of McCandless’s life and death, yet his essence remains slippery, vague, and elusive” (Krakauer 186). This sentence shows that it is impossible to ever really find out another person’s story, what drives them, how they end up where they do, etc., and that this is a problem built-in in biography. It appears over this specific biography because McCandless has died, and has left a fairly elusive trail. Although McCandless left many clues, there is still a span of almost a whole year which he didn’t leave any documentation. Krakauer does all he can to “make sense of McCandless’s life and death,” and he ultimately seems to come very close; yet a true, full understanding is impossible to