Into The Wild Essay: Chris Mccandless

Cyanne Hall

Mrs. Quassy

English 4P

22 February, 2016 Into the Wild Essay One day in July of 1990, Chris McCandless severed all contact with his family and set out West and started his two year long journey that would ultimately end with his untimely death in the frozen, unforgiving landscape of Alaska. McCandless was like us, the only difference, he went for his dreams. Although criticizers of Krakauer and McCandless believe Chris was mentally ill, McCandless suffered through emotional damage from family problems and was easily influenced in his vulnerable state through literature.

How can someone throw away so much and want nothing in return except the wild? The more I read into McCandless the more I saw why the wild interested him

“Walt’s split from his first wife, Marcia, was not a clean or amicable parting. Long after falling in love with Billie, long after she gave birth to Chris, Walter continued his relationship with Marcia in secret, dividing his time between two households, two families.” (Page 121) In the documentary Christopher’s sister, Carine speculates as to why Chris truly left on his adventure. When Carine and Chris were younger their father had a temper and would beat their mother. Their father would often force the kids to watch as he physically abused their mother. Chris found solace during their vacations when the whole family would go hiking and camping. I believe McCandless journeyed into the wild because he wanted to escape from his parents and start a new life where he felt safe because his favorite authors romanticized the wild in their writing and made it sound like a safe haven. In Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” the protagonist describes in the beginning where he is and how it looks, “Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat source