Into the Wild Essay Into the Wild is written by Jon Krakauer and is a biography.This book is the story of a man named Chris McCandless who graduated from college with a three point seven grade average and gave all his savings to charity .He then attempts to live off of the wilderness and is picked up by many kind people who agree to take him wherever he wants to go.All of these people offer him food ,shelter,or supplies but he refuses to take them stating that he wants to live off the wilderness.He very often is described to be a very independent person due to the actions that he takes in the book.He is characterized like this because he uses some people to get what he wants,he refuses help from anyone,and he usually stays away from …show more content…
A person that gets close to him is Ron Franz.He was the last person left out of his family and felt like Chris was the closest person he had to a son.He cared for him very much and helped him as much as he could.“Even when he was sleeping ,I was happy just knowing that he was there.”(Krakauer 55)Ron was very attached to Chris that he asks Alex if he could be his grandson.When Alex hears this he says they will discuss this when he got back from Alaska ,but he never came back. “ Chris McCandless ,uncomfortable with the request ,dodged the question:”We’ll talk about it when I get back from Alaska,Ron.’ ”(Krakauer 55)McCandless also never speaks to his parents after they have offended him by giving him a car .The reason he stays away is because he thinks that his parents are trying to buy his respect.“ I’m going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect.”(Krakauer 21)Chris McCandless’ identity is constructed throughout the story when he uses people to get what he wants,refuses help from others,and stays away from anyone who gets too close to
Throughout the story, Krakauer tells the reader more and more about Chris’ relationship with his parents, if it even is one. Chris never felt quite sure to be himself around his parents, forming his every move to how they wanted him to live through standards and rules. Sporadically in the book the reader learns different parts of Chris’ life, including what his parents thought of him. Krakauer states that Walt, Chris’ father, said, “‘He didn’t think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge”.
In his book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the impossibility of attaining complete self-reliance, revealing how eternally elusive it is. Krakauer suggests to the reader that Chris McCandless is not an independent, young man capable of walking into the wild self-sufficiently, alluding to the idea that in order to reach an autonomous state, McCandless had to rely on other things to get him there. Krakauer supports the suggestion that McCandless was not independent with the notion that when confronted with opportunities, McCandless chose to take what was presented to him rather than work for what he needed. A way in which Krakauer expresses self-reliance as being impractical is when McCandless decides to “take advantage of [the bus’]
But it was showed that his relationship with his parental figures was not ideal and he refuses any gifts from them and then randomly disappears which apparently doesn't worry his parents. But maybe he was selfish for disobeying his parents' feelings to shower their son with love, maybe Chris was trying to show his parents that he could be independent on his own. One of the reasons why he didn't keep contact with his parents or the people he met on the way of his personal adventure was because he was afraid of their disapproval. In the epilogue, it stated that his parent really did care about him and it showed their friend when they were on the bus realizing their son was dead. The three people he befriended was Jan Burress, Ronald Franz, and Wayne Westerberg, they offered him help but he denied every offer they had.
In a way Chris Mccandless became a casualty to his own passion and obsession. “Into the Wild” is a book written by John Krakauer about a man who went from being a graduate at Emory University to fulfilling a drive and need of living as one with the wild. Mccandless had more courage than many people and he was willing to give up anything and walk away. Chris was a man seeking adventure, filled with confidence and a dream. It seems that he lived with one mindset that nothing could stop him and he was going to prove that; he hitch hiked his way through America to reach a point of personal fulfillment.
Chris McCandless decided to drop everything and live his life the way he wanted to. He wanted to push himself to his own limits alone and Step Into The Wild. Chris decided what he wanted to do and what lifestyle he wanted to live and kept his word. McCandless left his past behind and started his journey Krakauer
After graduating from college Chris seemed to change. He said things like “an epic journey that would change everything”, that he saw college as “an absurd and onerous duty”, and that heading on this adventure made him feel free “from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world or abstraction and security and material excess”. Some people may say that Chris had struggles with his family “”From the things he said, you could tell something wasn’t right between him and his family…..””(Krakauer 18). But in reality I think it was something more. I feel like he was done having his family provide for him, ““I'm going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect””(Krakauer
Christopher Mccandless was a narcissistic person who was self absorbed and had serious delusions of grandeur. In the novel, Christopher McCandless was seen as an individual who was a reckless narcissist that perished out of arrogance and stupidity due to his actions. Krakauer writes a note describing that he will not return home for awhile and to send all the mail he receives back to where it has came from (Krakauer 69). From what McCandless has said, He has had an idea that there is a possibility of him never returning home.
Into the Wild is a point of view experience in the travels of Chris McCandless. There is an up lose and personal encounter of all of Chris’s characteristics and decisions. Chris was very unorthodox and had a different way of taking on obstacles along his journey. He did not have many friends, always keeping to himself all through college at Emory University.
Respect is very important to Chris, though it is apparent that Chris wanted to be absolutely clear to his parents that they did not have his respect. A short time before Chris vanished from his family’s sight, he wrote to Carine saying that he would “be through with them[his parents] once and for all, forever”(64). The very fact that he knew exactly what he was doing and was not apologetic in the slightest proves that he was quite selfish in terms of his parents as he never looked back. He wanted to escape the life that his parents desperately wanted so that he very carefully calculate his disappearance. Billie McCandless(Chris’s mother) informed Krakauer that Chris had instructed the post office to hold them until August 1, apparently so we wouldn’t know anything was up” (22) When Bille speaks of “them:” she was referencing the numerous letters that her and Walt sent to Chris during the entire summer after Chris graduated from Emory.
This observation allows readers to believe that since he was so introverted about his personal life that it began to build and build and break him down until he finally decided to blow up by retreating into the Alaskan wild. Both Chris and Alex’s personalities were similar and they contributed to his desire of experiencing something
This may have been a big reason Chris just up and left without telling anybody. Was he trying to prove something to his dad but it backfired on him? A lot of people think so and you can tell by reading the book that he did want to prove something we just don't know exactly what it was. Maybe he was trying to prove that he does not need money or any materialistic objects to be happy or maybe he was showing his parents he could have lived a happy life without going to college (they forced him to go) and that they just wasted their money .
In the eyes of Chris McCandless, the relationship between self and society are antagonistic. McCandless perspective gives an insight on how self and society cannot be companionable until he finds his true meaning deep within the wild. The relationship between self and society was developed throughout Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer who reported the story of Chris McCandless going into the wilderness and never coming back to modern society alive. Throughout the book, the reader is given more insight to McCandless reasons of leaving a gluttonous society where he could’ve been successful but modern society success is polar opposite from his definition of success.
Chris had a huge impact on everyone he knew, but he would not let them influence him or his decisions at all. He rebelled against his family because his father was too controlling. Later on, when any of his companions told him not to go to Alaska, or tried telling him to do anything that he did not want to, he would totally ignore them, and change the subject. As Krakauer writes in chapter 6, “McCandless…relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it. He had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family.
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ―Maya Angelou. Jon Krakauer’s true story titled Into the Wild is about a man who decides to throw away his old life and escape the rules of conventional society. Twenty-two-year-old Chris McCandless came from a well-to-do family in Virginia and, without warning, abandons everything. He changes his name, loses contact with his family, gives away his car and all his money, and begins a two-year long journey hitchhiking to Alaska where he eventually dies of starvation.
He’s out there somewhere, and I’d want someone to take care of him like I tried with Alex.” (Krakauer 46). McCandless made the relationship complex, because he would always try to keep his personal life a secret even though he trusted her. Burres knowing the irritation, that would come upon persisting McCandless about knowing any single detail about his personal life to inform his parents about his whereabouts, because Burres had a child out in the world just like Chris she knew nothing about, seeking the opportunity to