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Christopher Mccandless In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

1092 Words5 Pages

Hunter Roll
Professor Swan
ENGL 153
27 February 2023
Connection Narrative
In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the main character Christopher McCandless is viewed by most as being a young man who wishes to break free from the chains and rules of society by escaping to the great and wonderfully vast outdoors. The protagonist felt that his best option was to leave our man-made world behind and head out into the wilderness with nothing but a couple of books, some rice, and a small rifle. Some may see his actions and desires as brave and romantic. However, this essay will argue the opposite and provide some personal experiences along the way. His naivete to the perils that nature holds eventually leads poor McCandless to his unfortunate downfall. McCandless …show more content…

The wild is no place for human-created rules or for people who have a conscious. The wilderness was made for and by animals, ruthless beings that embrace the kill-or-be-killed mentality, it was not designed for poor-romantic Christopher McCandless. Rather than jumping the gun, and impulsively running into the wilderness with little to no plan or equipment, McCandless should have taken the time to learn the skills required to survive in the wild. Doing so could have ultimately saved his life and made his stay in nature much more manageable and enjoyable. In the beginning, McCandless was eager to go: “He was elated to be there. Inside the bus, on a sheet of weathered plywood spanning a broken window, McCandless scrawled an exultant declaration of independence: two years he walks the earth. no phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. ultimate freedom. an extremist” (Krakauer pg. 121). What he did not account for was that the thing he was trying to escape …show more content…

As a teenager in high school, I took many trips into the vast outdoors over my summers. One of my favorite spots to travel to for a week at a time was The Boundry Waters. I have visited on three separate occasions with each one offering me a brand new set of obstacles to tackle. The Boundry Waters lie on the border between the U.S. and Canada. The area is filled with lakes, forests, and rivers all interconnected with small land bridges called portages. Companies called Outfitters rent out their survival and outdoor equipment so that adventure seekers can take reliable gear out into the boundary waters. Outfitters also usually handle transportation to and from the edge of The Boundry Waters. They tend to drop you off on a Monday and pick you up tens of miles away from where they dropped you off a week later. Your goal is to canoe, survive, and portage your way to the extraction location. There is no help, there are no motor vehicles, there is no civilization, and you truly are all by yourself. In addition, there are countless amounts of wild animals including bears, moose, fish, wolves, otters, etc. Animals who do not have a moral compass or humane rules they must follow, and who adopt the aforementioned kill-or-be-killed mentality. From first-hand experience, encountering these creatures in their habitat is very exciting and these animals often give a false persona of being cuddly, cute, or domicile. But

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This goes on to show how arrogant and stubborn McCandless was to believe that he could survive with the bare minimum only because he convinced himself he could do it. Moreover, a writer named Nick Jans adds, “Same story: idealistic, energetic young guys who overestimated themselves, underestimated the country, and ended up in trouble. McCandless was hardly unique; there’s quite a few of these guys hanging around the state, so much alike that they’re almost a collective cliche. The only difference is that McCandless ended up dead, with the story of his dumbassedness splashed across the media.... (Jack London got it right in “To Build a Fire.”

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This concludes that McCandless wants to do something on his own for once, and he wants to prove to everyone that he doesn’t need help to survive. He wants to be an independent person experiencing the wild; this demonstrates that he was very brave because people usually have the desire to do something they really want, but here McCandless is actually attempting to do something alone. People usually fear of living alone without civilization, but it was very noble of him to do such a thing because sometimes people are too afraid of doing things alone or to actually achieve their real dreams. He is a very brave person because in this world, people are standing in the streets begging for money, whereas McCandless went out of his own way to figure out what to do and how to handle the situation without being a bother to anyone. Although this may be true, some may argue that he was a reckless fool.

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In addition, in a journal entry, McCandless writes, “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you” (Krakauer 37). This excerpt shows that McCandless sincerely is at peace with himself and the world because of where his ideals have taken him.

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