The Father-Son Relationship
For both McCandless and Krakauer, the combination of trying to please a difficult-to-please father, resenting authority, and discovering their fathers’ own great failings leads to an almost insurmountable rift. Krakauer was able to forgive his father only once he was no longer the same man. McCandless died before he had the opportunity to grow out of his anger.
Rather than being selfless, McCandless risky behaviour is exceedingly selfish, cutting himself off entirely from his family, who for two years didn’t even know if he was alive. There’s no question that this was Chris’s intention—that he somehow wanted to cut his parents from his life and punish them at the same time
“McCandless was thrilled to be on his
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McCandless describes what he is looking for on his odyssey, particularly on the Alaska trip, as “ultimate freedom.” It would seem that this largely represents, to him, freedom from other people’s rules and authority over him. Throughout his whole life he finds authority particularly oppressive, especially when exercised by anyone who he feels only has such power over him for arbitrary reasons. To live completely alone, in a world where the only laws he feels the need to follow are those of nature, is to him ultimate …show more content…
The use of figurative language in this chapter is to make a visual representation in the readers mind. “It’s satellites surrender to the low Kantishna plain”. The personification is used in this phrase is to make the reader believe and feel that the location is far away and so far that technology surrenders to mother nature. It is important for the reader to be aware of the distance that is so far from civilization. Thus, McCandless’s quest for freedom becomes, also, a rejection of any and all intimacy with others. This kind of freedom is inherently selfish. By living only according to his own rules and those of nature, no matter how principled and deeply-thought, McCandless is implicitly living only for his own best interest. For example, he refuses to get a hunting license because he doesn’t think it is any of the government’s business what he eats; were everyone to act this way, animal populations would be destroyed, and food supplies threatened. McCandless's ultimate freedom is thus limited in scope, for on any larger scale it would be dangerous and potentially