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Frontier Ideology In Christopher Mccandless Into The Wild

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Christopher McCandless, whose life and journey are the main ideas of the novel “Into the Wild”, was about an adolescent who, upon graduating from Emory College, decided to journey off into the Alaskan wilderness. He had given away his savings of $25,000 and changed his name to Alex Supertramp. His voyage to Alaska took him two years during which he traveled all across the country doing anomalous jobs and making friends. He inevitably made it to Alaska were he entered the wilderness with little more than a few books, a sleeping bag and a ten pound bag of rice. A couple months after his first day in the wild, his body was found in an abandoned bus. He had just graduated from college and already had feelings of angst and anxiousness. He was …show more content…

The frontier ideology is defined as an allure of nature that is culturally spread and shaped by people’s ideals of how the wilderness should truly be. The problematic effects resulted by McCandless’ journey into the undomesticated land of Alaska are analogous to the quandaries that the frontier ideology creates for our environmental. Just as the ideology is embedded in his mind; it is also embedded in the minds of many others. However, McCandless story can actually teach us about the plights with our culture and in doing so, allows us to move forward. This has turned into a myth in which many believe that the most important parts of nature are areas that have been untouched by human hands. This is why I consider McCandless was driven to the last frontier of Alaska and many of us sense that we must voyage to Yellow Stone or the Grand Canyon to have a true nature experience. Approaching his death, Chris realizes that he truly cannot live without society and people. This exhibits the boundaries of the frontier ideology and rather than establishing a connection between nature and humanity it makes it impossible to have one. In showing us this extrication, we can see the problems that the frontier ideology creates and generates constraints to the environment we protect and

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