Chris Mccandless Death Essay

Chris McCandless, a young man from Virginia, died from potato seeds. Potato seeds/starvation is written cause of death, but there is so much more. McCandless’s supposed cause of death has changed since he died varying from mold in the seeds to an amino acid called L-canavanine. The external factors to his death include his desire to live free from the constraints of society, which was completed through both living in solitude and adopting the new persona that was Alexander Supertramp. The factors of his death vary from person to person as everyone reads his life in different perspectives. One perspective is that of the Alaskans, who intensely despise McCandless for dying in their wilderness. McCandless’s death stirs up feelings of admiration

The seeds themselves were not poisonous, but the mold that grew on them, was quite poisonous. The mold is a fungus named Rhizoctonia leguminicola. Rhizoctonia leguminicola produces a potent alkaloid known as swainsonine, a compound well known to ranchers and veterinarians as a killer of livestock (Krakauer 193-194). The mold theory was disproved by University of Alaska chemists Edward Treadwell and Thomas Clausen in 2007 (205). Clausen and Treadwell concluded that the amino acid L-canavanine caused his death. The amino acid included antimetabolite, which in large amounts can be lethal. McCandless suspected that the potato seeds killed him as written in his journal is, “Extremely weak, fault of pot. seed” (189). For many years, many believed the theory of the mold. Until 2007, when Clausen and Treadwell examined the seeds thoroughly and concluded it was the amino acid. Clausen and Treadwell were not the first chemists/biochemists to examine and study the story of Chris McCandless. Another well-known theory was that a neurotoxin referred to as beta-ODAP had killed him (207). Scientifically speaking, Chris McCandless died because of an amino acid; lethal in large amounts, but what brought him to only eat potato seeds is as much the cause of death as the

Alexander Supertramp was the identity that Chris adopted that severed the ties between him and his material possessions and biological family. Chris McCandless died when Alexander Supertramp came into existence. Supertramp was a vagabond, who lived off the land and saw real freedom as being cut off from society. Alexander Supertramp was very much a character to McCandless and was his reasoning behind conducting himself in a way any logical mortal would not. Alexander Supertramp could live in the wild and come out alive because to McCandless, Supertramp was an immortal figure. To the rest of the world, however, Supertramp was nothing more than fiction. Supertramp was a way for McCandless to live outside of the constraints that being Chris McCandless had created for him, that way of life killed him. McCandless’s death was brought on by living in the philosophical view of Alexander Supertramp, who became nonexistent by the end of McCandless’s life. As in his SOS note, McCandless signed, “Chris McCandless August?” (198), signifying the death of Alexander Supertramp and resurrection of Chris McCandless, but the new life of Chris McCandless was extremely short-lived. McCandless returned to his former identity as he tried to leave the wilderness and reenter society. His death as Chris McCandless, a mortal being, has brought much loathing from the Alaskan