Into The Wild Theme Essay

In literature, there are an abundant amount of themes and life lessons written in between the lines of every individual piece of work. In some works of literature, there are even various themes being displayed throughout a single book’s story line. In the story, Into the Wild, John Krakauer writes about a boy named Christopher McCandless. McCandless is a boy who aspires to attain more in life than just materialistic values. Since McCandless grew up in a fairly wealthy family, he already experienced living a materialistic life. As he grew up, he decided that a materialistic life was not a life he wanted to live. Instead, he followed his dream and took pleasure in living in the wilderness and living a transcendentalist lifestyle. On the other

In the story, Into the Wild, McCandless was raised in a wealthy Virginian family. With a successful aerospace engineer as a father, lots of pressure was put onto McCandless to do well in school and in life. As McCandless grew up, he was on the path to becoming successful like his father. As stated in the book, “Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta,” and “…was offered membership in Phi Beta Kappa but declined, insisting that titles and honors are irrelevant” (16). McCandless did not believe in the traditional life of going to school, graduating with high honors, and then pursuing a hard earning career—like his father. In addition, when he was offered a new car, he insisted that he already had a good enough car. He even complained, “I can’t believe they’d try and buy me a car,” (16) since he already had a perfectly working car. McCandless was dissimilar to most people. As it would be an extravagant acquisition to others, the opportunity to a new car, he took it as an insult—as if his old car was not enough. McCandless believed in living a life without any materialistic treasures and would rather live a free and happy life in the