c) I can empathise with Walt McCandless, Chris McCandless’s father. “....I spent a lot of time with Chris, perhaps more than with any of my other kids. I really liked his company even though he frustrated us so often.” (Krakauer, 104) Chris and his father did not truly get along very well as Chris got older, since their personalities were so stubborn, they would fight a lot. Walt loved Chris but rarely showed it, which made Chris have a certain hate towards his father. I empathise with Walt because his son died while they were on bad terms, although he knew Chris loved him, Walt had no time to show Chris how much he loved him. Which would be hard to deal with, this is why I empathise with Walt McCandless.
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”.
11) The title of my book is Crash. This is a good title because it captures the overall feeling of the story. The main character suffers through a traumatic vision that eventually is all she can think about. The vision ends up taking over her life, causing her to “crash” or shut down. She is unable to make the vision go away, which causes her to act out of the ordinary, so her friends and family begin to worry.
Lastly, he was an adult and he is allowed to make his own decisions. My first reason I think Chris was justified was that he had a difficult family life. He felt that he had to get away from them. In the book it says “Long after falling in love with Billie,long after she gave birth to Chris,Walt continued his relationship with Marcia in secret dividing his time between two households” on page 121.
Chris’s apartment in Atlanta was vacated and his odyssey was in progress, he was finally free from the influence of others. Krakauer writes, “At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers”(18). Walt’s affair with Maria played a role in why Chris left society to live on his own terms,
McCandless and America In August 1992 a the body of Christopher Johnson McCandless was found in a bus in Alaska by two moose hunters. His story was traced back and written. McCandless left his friends, family, and life behind him to survive the Alaskan wild alone. Chris McCandless found the American dream by realising he should have shared his happiness with the ones that he loved.
Chris Mccandless was never your ordinary kid. He was never much to show his anger to anyone. Like all humans Chris did have his faults (largely hypocrisy) but they were nothing major. Even with these unique differences Chris did grow up to be a good kid. Growing up Chris was always diverging from the norm, an anomaly.
A trait simply described as the overestimation of oneself can be a quintessential element in understanding a character’s downfall. People such as Chris McCandless, Oedipus and Tiger Woods are key examples when trying to relate, understand, and analyze what we know today as “Hubris”. The connections that can be made between each of these characters describe the very nature of how a hero will ultimately meet their bane as a result of being blinded by their own flaws. The death of Chris McCandless was an extremely controversial subject that involved many different people. The justification of his death can be argued in a way .
The reason Chris despises his parents seems to stem from their prioritization of their jobs, to obtain money, to buy things which Chris does not care for. His parents symbolize “the billionaire road to joy” as they try to enforce such a way of living on him. Their willingness to buy Chris a new car when he has one that works fine offends him and disgusts him: “I can't believe they’d try to buy me a car… a car I will never trade... and they think I’d actually accept a new car from them!” (Krakauer, 21). To abandon the materialism and technological ideology that society drills in us, he must abandon his parents.
What is a hero? A hero is a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities. There are many people who meet the characteristics of a hero, but Chris McCandless is not one of them. There are many reasons that prove why McCandless does not meet the characteristics of a hero and there is many other people who do meet the criteria of a hero. My idea of a hero is a someone who takes on large tasks and shows great bravery in his/her character.
But his mom would talk to teacher and make sure Chris got the grade he thought he should have earned. Another example was when Billie and Walt McCandless offered to pay for Chris’s law school. Highly offended, Chris declines the offer. I believe Chris was searching for something and thought
Christopher McCandless’s was a young wise man and stubborn guy that was intelligent he knew the right answers to respond which got himself out of things but also got himself into difficult situations that were not processed right. McCandless was raised in a upper middle class family in Annandale Virginia by parents Walt and Billie. He had eight siblings which one he was super close to named Carine and the rest were half siblings from his dads first marriage. Growing up Chris had a rough childhood with his parents problems and the affairs they had. McCandless would question himself why people would treat each other bad he would try to make a sense of the world.
He’d successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm’s length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he’d slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz’s life as well,” every time someone tried to become close to him, he pushed him or her away. When Ronald Franz asked to adopt him, Chris told him that they would talk about it when he returns from Alaska. Chris’ problems with his father affected his ability to form new, close relationships, and ultimately sent him to his death.
From the beginning of the novel it is apparent that McCandless has issues with his parents, mostly his father in particular. McCandless doesn’t approve of his father attempting to take over his life. His father’s ideals for him include going to college, getting a high-class job, and living a “normal” lifestyle. None of which is in McCandless’ future plans. This authority his father as well as the government tries to set upon him is one of the reasons why McCandless left to go into the wild.
Chris’s parents had fed him so many big lies throughout his whole childhood,” When Walt’s double life came to light, the revelations inflicted deep wounds. All parties suffered terribly” (121). Walt, Chris’s father, had continued his relationship with his first wife even after having kids with his second wife, Billie, Chris’s mom, Chris felt like society and money corrupted his father and whole family and he just wanted to get away from it all.
The problem with showing the viewer that Chris is this wonderful person all the time is that it’s fake. Showing the character’s his faults makes him more relatable. On top of that Chris is very intriguing on his outlooks of the life he lives adding a sort of mysterious enigma to his character. “Some readers admired the boy immensely for his courage and noble ideals; other fulminated that he was a reckless idiot, a wacko, a narcissist who perished out of arrogance and stupidity—and was undeserving of the considerable media attention he received” (Krakauer – Author’s Note).