Into The Wild Chris Mccandless Tragic Hero Essay

Alaska. Many people see it as a this barren and frozen desert that is uninhabitable. To others, it is this vast area of land that would be amazing to live in. Chris McCandless is a part of the latter group. McCandless was a young adult that ran away from his life and family on the East Coast and marched through the United States to Alaska. After surviving there for a few months, he died of starvation. His story was written about in the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and then turned into the movie Into the Wild by Sean Penn. Although many see Krakauer and Penn’s portrayal of Chris as that of a tragic hero, Chris does not fit Arthur Miller’s criteria of having a possibility of victory and does not have a flaw that leads to his demise, thus

Arthur Miller’s most important criteria to be considered a tragic hero is that of having a possibility of victory, without which there is no point to one’s journey, but throughout the story, there is no clear indication of what Chris is trying to do. Chris’s goal was to get to Alaska, but when Wayne Westenberg asked him what he would do there, his answer was “You just livin man.” His plan in Alaska was to “just live,” and there was no real way of accomplishing this goal. Since there was no goal for McCandless to accomplish, there was no possibility of victory in his life. Many argue though that his goal was to just live in Alaska, which to some extent he did. He did successfully survive in Alaska for two months; however, he was horribly unprepared. He did not have any prior experience of living in the wild for an extended period of time and did not know what he would face in Alaska. He brought only ten pounds of rice for a two-month trek and did not even think of bringing hiking boots, an absolute necessity for walking around in Alaska during the

Chris set out on this trip as a way to run away from his family and find out who he was, and in doing so ended up in Alaska alone. Many people along the way tried to join him or help him, but he rejected them all because he felt he had to go upon this trip alone. However, after some time in Alaska had passed, Chris wrote in his journal “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” After writing this, Chris came to the sudden realization that maybe he made the wrong choice coming out “Into the Wild” alone. Just because he was regretful about his decision does not mean that it was a flaw in his nature and him coming alone was not the reason for his demise. While it may have been the wrong choice, it was not a flaw that fulfilled Miller’s criteria, thus Chris’s story can not be considered as that of a tragic hero. Some may argue that McCandless’s fatal flaw was that he was stubborn and did not accept help. Clearly, he was unprepared for his trip to Alaska and was wildly over-confident about his skills, but these were not flaws in his character. Many people young adults are stubborn and overly-confident and Chris was just like them. Instead of being stubborn, one could see him as inexperienced. He jumped into experiences without preparing, “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real