Our nation was founded on the core beliefs that we are all entitled to the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”- ideals often embraced by today’s culture, and exercised as a prideful venture toward “The American Dream”. Indeed, this American way of living, this virtue, extends beyond simply going to the office each and every day for eight programmed, anticlimactic hours- we dream up solutions to complex problems, turn science fiction into reality, and build up our own capitalistic enterprises with a burning passion for wealth, forging “something” out of nothing but our will, and earnest determination. For McCandless, taking this fundamental ideology back to its roots, was something vital to him, back where these ambitious dreams dealt by pioneers, became a reality- the pure American soil, free from material excess. Almost nothing can be described as more American then leaving behind everything known to you, in an unfaltering search to conquer a greater purpose, to start over and make a name for yourself- it’s what the Pilgrims had done when they set out on the Mayflower, exploring for a better life, finding a broad new frontier which would become the canvas for innovation and the foundation for all great American dreams; this is what McCandless sought to reach, in his own American way. What does it mean to be a rebel?: Exhausted by the restraints of a European government, and ambitious to create a new life, a better life for individuals who held the