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Who Is Chris Mccandless Ignorant In Into The Wild

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Chris McCandless’s Rational Exploration: To claim that a young 22 year old boy going into the Alaskan wilderness alone is ignorant, witless, and crazy is inaccurate. This is Chris McCandless. McCandless embarked on a two year long, solo journey to break away from societal exceptions, and discover himself, along with the unknowns of the wild that was recorded in the writings of “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer. Shaun Callarman, a former police officer and now writer, expressed his disapproval of McCandless’ journey by attesting, “I think that Chris McCandless was bright and ignorant at the same time. He had no common sense, and he had no business going into Alaska with his romantic silliness. He made a lot of mistakes based on arrogance. I don’t …show more content…

Every individual has his or her own life experiences that make up how they interact with the world. McCandless’s motivations and experiences led him to be the contemplative, idealistic, adventurous man we all know him as. These somewhat “reckless” actions stemmed from his deep desire for freedom and real connection with the wild. "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. 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" (Krakauer 57). This makes plain just how deeply McCandless wanted to have a full, valuable life and to him that meant exploring the country, letting go of what could hold him back, and wanting

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Christopher McCandless was a free spirit. Ever since he was young he never needed to conform to society’s rules of how life should be lived. He was a fiercely intelligent human being who had a serious case of wanderlust. The idea of being free to travel and live life how he thought it should be lived, attracted him like bees to honey. To put it simply, McCandless was just a man who believed life should be lived a different way, and he went out to live his life that way.

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Where there wasn’t anyone to tell him, no, don’t follow that route. We don’t want you to hinder all that we have indure, your parents want more for you.. He grew weary of his surroundings, he tried too hard to make sense of the everyday world. Tired of the representation of a good samaritan, McCandless could care less what everyone else did, prior to that very moment. He wanted to choose the path that he wanted, just like his heroes Jack London and David Thoreau.

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Although McCandless’s journey was unfortunately short, his life still managed to make a huge impact on lives all over the world till this day, inspiring them to break out of their comfort zone. McCandless’s odyssey was so significant because it was distinct, inspiring, and difficult. McCandless was a very unique man with an out -of

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After reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, I wondered to myself why I should even care about Chris McCandless. I can see how some think Chris McCandless was an idiot and he was trying to kill himself. After I dove deeper into this question, I learned that Chris McCandless story teaches us important life lessons. Chris McCandless teaches us to get out of our comfort zone. Ronald Franz was an older man who encountered Chris McCandless and gave him a ride from Salton City California to Grand Junction Colorado In Chris’s last letter to Ronald Franz, he says “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation…

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“Same story : idealistic, energetic young guys overestimated themselves, underestimated the country, and ended up in trouble. Only difference is, the story of his dumbassesness splashed across the media. “. This quote from chapter 8 perfectly sums up what Chris McCandless actually, not courageous adventure Krakauer presents him to be in his book “Into the wild”. Chris McCandless is a reckless narcissist whose own hubris got him killed in a ridiculous attempt to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. In his deplorable attempt to run away from his personal life, McCandless went without any basic survival gear or knowledge, and got himself killed.

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With a rugged exterior matching the untamed landscape, Westerberg embodies the spirit of adventure and authenticity that McCandless seeks. He muses, “The basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. 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” (Krakauer 56). Westerberg’s words encapsulate the essence of McCandless’s quest – a relentless pursuit of freedom and self-discovery, untethered by societal constraints. Through Westerberg’s lens, McCandless emerges as a hero, bravely carving his path through the wilderness, unbound by conventions.

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Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a biography that follows Chris McCandless and his journey through the wilderness while finding himself along the way. Chris McCandless died in the August of 1992 after a four month journey through places like Mexico and Alaska. Krakauer investigates his actions and analyzes his identity after his death, trying to find meaning within his seemingly unnecessary expedition. Chris McCandless constructs his personal identity as a man who wanted to be challenged and inspired by his actions and interests with people he met on the road, and his beliefs and values as a stubborn person. Chris McCandless’s actions are unusual in many ways; for one, he graduates college with honors, but instead of pursuing a career,

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The story of Chris McCandless has become a pop culture phenomenon. Many are fascinated by his desire to abandon his family and society and “walk into the wild” (Krakauer 69).  Newscasts, magazine articles, movies, and books have tried to define what motivated him to give up everything for his Alaskan odyssey; however, the answers died with McCandless. People make assumptions about him without knowing his entire story.  McCandless chose to do the unconventional, making people think he was either foolish or brave and determined, but ultimately he was justified for doing what he did.

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Ultimate freedom... No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild” (Krakauer 163). Chris McCandless despised the way society felt like a cage to him, which is why he took off into the wild and remained there in nature as “the freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good

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Everyone sets their goals at different expectations than others which is why you typically don’t go for the same goal as other people. The adventure that McCandless went on was dangerous, but it fit his expectation to be independent and to find where he belongs. McCandless valued self-reliance ,he needed to be his own person, with his own vision and way of thinking so that others wouldnt influence him along the way. He recognized that the only way for him to find his own truth would to be self-centered and focus on his own being first, without others clouding his sense of

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McCandless would do anything to figure out what the meaning of life was. “[He] wanted excitement and danger, and the chance to sacrifice [himself] for [his] love” (15) in order to know he was living his life. McCandless was the kind of person that would do something that could potentially kill him if he knew it could have a great outcome if nothing went wrong. McCandless wanted to experience life for all it had to offer. McCandless always did what he felt was right for him at the time, and he was the person to “[live] out his beliefs” (67) and would stop at nothing to do so.

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The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. 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.” This was written by Chris McCandless in a letter to Ron Franz where he shares his strong opinions about society and how there is great joy and peace to be found in non-conforming to societal rules. Chris McCandless felt that he had found his true connection to nature and

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1130 Words | 5 Pages

However, as he recognized the atrocities of the human world, he abandoned his future plans and set out for the outside world in hopes to find his happiness through an independent and different life. In order to achieve happiness, McCandless began by leaving his old life behind, as “he intended to invent an utterly new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience” (Krakauer 22), and sank away from the money-driven lifestyle he was born into. McCandless recognized his parents’ need for money to fulfill satisfaction and could not accept how people could continuously live off the joy of wealth. McCandless’s distaste of American society is further strengthened by the fact that “McCandless’s face would darken with anger and he’d fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic idiocy of mainstream American life. ”(Krakauer 52)

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1661 Words | 7 Pages

This concludes that McCandless wants to do something on his own for once, and he wants to prove to everyone that he doesn’t need help to survive. He wants to be an independent person experiencing the wild; this demonstrates that he was very brave because people usually have the desire to do something they really want, but here McCandless is actually attempting to do something alone. People usually fear of living alone without civilization, but it was very noble of him to do such a thing because sometimes people are too afraid of doing things alone or to actually achieve their real dreams. He is a very brave person because in this world, people are standing in the streets begging for money, whereas McCandless went out of his own way to figure out what to do and how to handle the situation without being a bother to anyone. Although this may be true, some may argue that he was a reckless fool.

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McCandless describes what he is looking for on his odyssey, particularly on the Alaska trip, as “ultimate freedom.” It would seem that this largely represents, to him, freedom from other people’s rules and authority over him. Throughout his whole life he finds authority particularly oppressive, especially when exercised by anyone who he feels only has such power over him for arbitrary reasons. To live completely alone, in a world where the only laws he feels the need to follow are those of nature, is to him ultimate

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