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Into The Wild Analysis Essay

1344 Words6 Pages

The book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer portrays a teenager named Christopher McCandless, who is unsatisfied with the conventional and materialistic lifestyle that society has come to value. McCandless’s unusual adventures and subsequent death led to comments describing his actions as irrational and cowardly. Yet, one must fully understand the principle that McCandless was standing for before evaluating his decisions. Christopher McCandless’s values are exemplified in his letter to Ronald Franz, where he emphasizes the need for an individual to take risks and embrace nature; in doing so, he reveals himself as a brave and adventurous man who refuses to let boredom take over his life. Christopher McCandless insists that a life of uniformity is damaging to the adventurous spirit that is inherent to all people, and …show more content…

By insisting that “nothing is more damaging,” McCandless shows frustration towards the secure lifestyles of the vast majority of people around the world. His use of the word “nothing” indicates that McCandless sees men’s pursuit of security, something most people reach for in the modern age, as something that absolutely kills off the spirit for adventure. To stress this point, McCandless describes how people live within “unhappy circumstances” but fail to take the initiative to change their life because they are “conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism” (57). By incorporating catalog, precisely the phrase “security, conformity, and conservatism,” McCandless is able to magnify the extent to which men are confined and shackled by a tedious and repetitive life. By mentioning the fact that many men are living within “unhappy circumstances”, McCandless also shows that the status under which the vast majority of the world is living fails to satisfy the needs of most humans. To end his message, McCandless asserts that there is “no greater

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