After reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, I wondered to myself why I should even care about Chris McCandless. I can see how some think Chris McCandless was an idiot and he was trying to kill himself. After I dove deeper into this question, I learned that Chris McCandless story teaches us important life lessons. Chris McCandless teaches us to get out of our comfort zone. Ronald Franz was an older man who encountered Chris McCandless and gave him a ride from Salton City California to Grand Junction Colorado In Chris’s last letter to Ronald Franz, he says “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation…The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experience” (Krakauer 57). People need to live a life outside of their comfort zone because joy in life comes from new experiences and adventure. We learn from Chris that we need to escape our comfort zone. …show more content…
Chris’s whole life exemplifies what it means to be self-reliant. After Chris finished college, he gave all his college money to charity. He eventually lived on his own for some years and goes into the wild to live by himself. While in the wild, he finds a bus and stays there where in time he ends up dying. Inside the bus on a piece of weathered plywood he wrote “Two years he walks the Earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom… The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution… No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild” (163). Chris explains the importance of becoming self-reliant and the freedom one receives when becoming self-reliant. Throughout Into the Wild, Chris teaches us to be