Christopher McCandless, the main focus from Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild observes the factors that impacted Chris McCandless to his unfortunate death at the age of 24 in August of 1992 on Stampede Trail, Alaska in attempts to live off the land. Richard Russo who grew up to write his own memoir Elsewhere describing his “American childhood, as lived in the Fifties by a lower-middle class that seems barely to exist anymore” (Russo, 12, 2012). Russo grew up with his mother, Jean Russo, who had Obsessive compulsion disorder, which he tries make sense of the guilt associated with his mother after her death. The two had been impacted developmentally different by the chronosystem and interaction of the microsystems. The unalike interactions explain the differing outcome of the two. On one …show more content…
Through observation of the microsystems and the interactions these had with the individual, either McCandless or Russo at the center, offers insight to what impacted such different developmental outcomes. By comparing the resiliency of the two, it is apparent that Chris McCandless was less resilient than Richard Russo. To be considered resilient an individual is able to “adapt well—emotionally, socially, and behaviorally” despite the stress and vulnerability the individual experiences (Broekman, 2011). Early experience is the most crucial time period to influence resilience because it is a period of heightened sensitivity to environmental factors that can later on develop to become mental disorders. Some social factors that influence the