Examples Of Chris Mccandless Being A Hero

A hero can be represented as an icon of an idea desired by the rest of the world, but when a hero is only romanticised as one it shields the true person behind the mask. Chris McCandless is such a hero, who has been published as a hero and phenomenal adventurist through Krakauer's book, "Into The Wild." Through Krakauer's writing, McCandless has since been elevated to a stature of an American hero, while underneath the story we can see McCandless not as an American hero, but under the more appropriate title of an American Idiot.

Krakauer, through a transcendental tone towards McCandless, transformed the young boy of 24 to an American hero after his death, while in reality McCandless better fits the role of American idiot. While many adventurists

Krakauer shows the boy as a hero seeking "opportunity in his predicaments while acting rashly while discarding of necessary possessions such as a rifle, and the burning of his money" (Krakauer 29). McCandless later realizes that one cannot survive without much needed supplies and regains some of what he lost to continue living on his great journey. Krakauer illustrates the action of burning his money as a poetic moment, almost inspiring, with a strong transcendentalist tone that makes the reader want to get rid of all possessions and burn their money as well, but this majestic illustration is false in its inability to show McCandless's rash nature and inability to think his actions through showing utter ignorance and childlike behavior. McCandless's ignorance is hard to pin through the makeup Krakauer has placed over the character, this prevents the readers from seeing the truth underneath the mask. Further in the book, McCandless reaches his final destination of Alaska and while fending for

Matthew Power in The Cult of Chris McCandless points out the "enigma of Chris McCandless" through the themes of "self-invention, risk, and our complex relationship to the natural world  while McCandless may have been a visionary man who wished to become one of a higher thinking and knowledge but through the mesh of lies that shield him he is only presented as an "unprepared fool, a greenhorn who had fundamentally misjudged the wilderness he'd wanted so desperately to commune with”. McCandless's hubris was one of the many reasons he did not survive his journey. He was too caught up in the pursuit of a dream that when it came down to acting upon it he was unable to succeed and fell under. There are many ways McCandless could've saved himself and got care and possible survived from his ordeal, one of the more obvious ways was to get up and leave. Some might ask those who envision McCandless as a hero, why didn't he get up and leave? While they may respond with, he was weak and couldn't leave, then why didn't he do it when he realized that he was not eating enough. McCandless's pride and ignorance ultimately showed throughout his life and are causes of his death as a