To What Extent Was Chris Mccandless Justified In Into The Wild

Alex Young

Mrs. Moffat

English 5-6

11 January 2023

Was Chris Justified?

Everyone who has read and/or heard about Chris McCandless' story, they would have thought it was a good idea for him to leave his home without telling anyone. Which ended up costing his life. Some may think that he was crazy and had no business leaving his home. They may think that he was idiotic for thinking he would be able to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. While others believe he had a point and purpose in what he was doing. After reading Into the Wild and watching the Return to the Wild documentary, I’ve come to believe that Chris was indeed justified in his actions. For good reasons. He had a traumatizing stage in his childhood that caused him to have hate for

His 2 parents and his younger sister Carine. His father worked for NASA and was a rocket scientist. His mother was an entrepreneur. As Chris was growing up, he grew a deep relationship with his younger sister Carine. They were very close and never left each other's side. Chris had a lot of energy as a child. Not only that, he was smart. As a 4-year-old, he got up in the middle of the night and went inside his neighbors house and retrieved candy where he knew it was located. How unbelievable is that? He would then become an entrepreneur in his senior year of high school. He would go door to door for a kitchen remodeling company. At the same time, he would look back on his family moments and would recognize that when he family spent the least amount of money, those would be the happiest times. Yet, there weren’t always happy times. It was the exact opposite. Chris’s parents would fight each other. Their mother would have them see it in front of their eyes and say, “Look what your father is doing to me!” As young children, that is very traumatizing to witness. For anyone it would be. They would see their father hurt their mother and couldn’t do much about it. What you can take from Chris leaving unexpectedly is he may have felt guilt as a young child. That he couldn’t protect his mother from his abusive father. Even though Chris was a young child, he felt the responsibilities of an adult. He was

Chris had more reason to leave unexpectedly with no trace of finding him. He was connected to the wild. Although Chris’s parents were abusive towards each other and made Chris’s childhood traumatizing, he had wholesome moments. He and his family would go on camping trips in nature. It’s funny that Chris has wrath towards his parents for the traumatizing childhood yet his parents were the ones who introduced the wild to him. Which is the most precious thing to him. Chris had a deep love for the qualities and feelings of nature. For him, it was the true meaning of life and where he could have true happiness. Chris also had a desire to share his perspective of nature with people he met. In the book Into The Wild on page 57, he wrote a whole essay-like letter to his friend Ronald Franz, also known as Ron. Chris had interesting things to express to Ron about what he knew was the way of life. At one point, he said, “The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” What he was explaining to Ron was happiness found in different types of experiences. He explained to Ron that enduring through new experiences would make him happy. He went on to say that he would enjoy his life by continuing to change his experiences to use the best of his life. Of course, this is all of