Unprepared In Into The Wild

Taking a journey into an unknown state can cause many problems, but with no map or proper equipment, more problems arise. In the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, Chris wanted to escape reality/society but he went into the adventure blindsided and unprepared. He did many things and didn’t think of his family and friends back home. When Chris left his whole life behind, he did some questionable things that made him a reckless and arrogant person by not being prepared, throwing his life away, and made arrogant errors that caused his death that could have been prevented.
When embarking on his journey, Chris was very unprepared. He didn’t fully prepare for the weather, didn’t plan taking money with him, and decided that taking a map was unnecessary.

When he decided to take on this adventure, he basically threw his life away. “In May 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta.”(20) He had a high school and college degree. Not many people with an education like that would drop their whole life to go risk it in the wild. “More than 24,000 dollars remained at the time of Chris’s graduation.” (20) Chris was given money when he was in college, when he graduated there was money left over. “Money his parents thought he would intended to use for law school.”(20) Before Chris decided to go to Alaska, he planned on going to law school. Since he was very intelligent and had a good education he could have done anything like a lawyer, doctor, gone into business, etc. He had a very bright future and many people were involved and proud of his success, but he dropped everything and

Bringing a map, keeping some money with him, accepting items that people offered him, and many more factors contributed to his death. Dozens of predictions were made on how Chris died. Jon Krakauer wrote an article in the New Yorker specifically on how Chris died. “The probable cause of death, according to the coroner's report, was starvation.” (Jon Krakauer “How Chris McCandless Died”) People believed that he ate potato seeds that were possibly poisonous (Hedysarum Alpinum) due to it being a resource around and he was starving. Chris wouldn’t have known they were poisonous but he most likely wouldn’t have eaten them if he would have accepting money, food, or have been better prepared. They think the seeds cause his stomach to weaken then eventually his body weakened, at one point he was too weak to leave the bus to try to go find food. If Chris would have saved some of the $24,000 or kept his map he would have had a better chance of