When Chris started his adventure he was happy. He was just living the moment where no one could stop him, just to follow his beliefs. Being on his journey Chris didn’t want to stay in contact with anyone. “Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South.”
He desired to live off the land and travel across North America. One explorer who is similar to chris is Reinhold Messner. Explorers are motivated to leave their life behind and go on an adventure because of them being the center of their own existence, their mistakes turning into misery and them rejecting the established norms in society. McCandless had exceptional reasons for leaving home and taking on the life of a homeless person living in the wild. McCandless wanted to experience this type of individuality and to experience the life that Henry David
There’s a difference between being ignorant and being intelligent, Chris was staying put on that line. He fell to either side every now and then, for example: burning his money was ignorant. He should have known better to leave with a plan more thought out than “Get to Alaska.” Man vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls, Survivorman Les Stroud, and Man, Woman, Wild’s Mykel and Ruth Hawke are all people who appreciate how fascinating nature can be as well as how great it is to be out in the wilderness away from civilization, but they also understand that they cannot go out ill prepared. Not only did they leave their life with materials that could protect them, nourish them, and help them stay alive, but they studied up on the possible problems they could face both major and very minor.
Imagine giving up all your possessions and going into the wild with nothing but the bare necessities. Most people would turn away at the idea of it, but Chris McCandless found the allure of the wilderness greater than the risk. According to the book Into the Wild, “No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny.” (23) McCandless’s life was filled with family problems, and he wanted to truly find himself in the depths of the Alaskan wilderness. He knew that his journey could very easily result in his death, but he didn’t care.
Wesley first demonstrates this because he is a sheriff. He put aside his own dreams to be a lawyer and became the sheriff in the town both for his father and to protect others. His self-sacrificing of his dreams is a selfless act that people can appreciate and look up to him as someone whom they want to be able to be like. In addition, Wesley also put his family aside in order to do the right thing, no matter how much it hurt him to do so: “’My brother – your uncle – has run afoul of the law. I had to arrest him.
Mccandless sense of self confidence while trying to find his identity helped him to progress in life, but was also his greatest downfall; Into the Wild demonstrates self confidence as not an unacceptable trait to have, but the significance of the negative or positive effects it can possess. Confidence played a big role in Mccandless life, so much that he created relationships with his family and other people that caused him to go on his adventures. Throughout this book Mccandless expresses his hate towards his parents. When he was old enough to realize that his dad had cheated on his mom this particular aspect changed him.
We won’t know the exact reason because he journey proved fatal. We can only base our ideas off of books and his family statements. He believed that he needed to isolate himself from the rest of the world to find himself. He felt the need to enjoy nature and how a life without money and materialistic things would be. As I stated before he could’ve have accomplished his goals in a different way.
McCandless himself had his reasons to hurt his parents that way mainly because they kept living a lie and it just exploded in their face when Chris found out. I am led to believe as well, that McCandless was trying to leave the Stampede Trail because he had forgiven them but since he couldn’t leave due to the river being so high and strong. McCandless had never anticipated or let alone plan to die just to hurt his parents. That was something that came totally unexpected and without his awareness. McCandless was also never a harm to people he met.
I do admire him for everything he did to be happy. Americans tend to believe that Chris McCandless has been just plain crazy. I do agree with that because everything that he did never went well. McCandless was plain crazy because of his Alaskan journey made him realize how much he missed society, but at the same time he could not be in society because that reminded him of his past when he was with his family. at that time he just wanted to go away from society.
He didn’t have a awful life from what I understood. He had no worries in the world with just finishing up college and being born into a family with money. He ran away from his friends and family to find himself without saying a word, that is why I agree with Shaun Callarmans statement, “he had no business going into Alaska with his romantic silliness”. .(Callarman,2016)Chris mccandless wanted to go somewhere that would make him happy without anyone always telling what to do. I believe that he should've told his parents that he was leaving,but then again they probably would not have listened to
Christopher McCandless left presuming to leave his old life behind, change his name, make a new life for himself and live off the wild. Chris gave everything he owned away, leaving himself with nothing but a dream to go to Alaska. His remembrance of his past has left him with a deep feeling of being unwanted by his parents past and present. From his parents arguing about little things to going on his first road trip to where he grew up in California and learning about how his dad was cheating with his mom and had a son with his other wife, it really disturbed him giving him very mixed feelings. This ultimately lead to him wanting a new life away from his past.
Siddhartha’s and Chris’ journeys are both motivated by the rejection of their old lifestyles. Chris’ parents argued a lot in Into the Wild and had many fights, despite this they still loved him. Even though Chris was loved by his parents he wanted to escape all of their fights, this is why instead of just isolating himself he actually had to take a physical journey. Chris also wanted to leave behind his wealth and money, so he took his journey to Alaska. Siddhartha takes his journey into the woods to be a Samana because he wanted to live with them and leave his dad and his fame behind.
Tragically, despite at the end of their journeys Timothy and Chris started to realize their mistakes, it was too late for them to turn back. Two days before his estimated death, Chris wrote in his journal a controversial line: “Happiness only real when shared”(Chapter 18, Krakauer). He took the journey to escape from people and his past. Whole his life he chose to be a loner, avoiding intimate attachments and disregarding other people’s feelings. This entry is an evidence that he re-evaluated himself and was ready to go back to the human community and face his fears that he was trying to hide from in the wilderness.
Into the Wild Original, is the word many label themselves. “Establishing their own original ideas and doing acts that no one has committed”. But I own one particular opinion being; everyone was designed to be unique but not original. Everyone is different and thinks differently, but inherits their ideas from other people and modifies it to makes it their own. Chris McCandless was definitely a unique individual, imprinting lasting impressions on everyone who come to know him and those who are now reading about him.
In the book, “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless, who introduces himself as Alex, hitchhiked his way to Alaska. He embarked on an adventure to Alaska to get away from not only his family, but humanity in general to figure out how to escape from the life he did not enjoy. He decided to give up his life as a college graduate just to prove that not everyone needs materialistic things in order to live a happy life. With regard to that, he left his family behind without a notice of what his plans were going to be after he graduated. In my opinion on what provoked Chris McCandless to venture off into the wild was his philosophical beliefs to get out of society and the way his parents treated him built a dreadful relationship between them.