To What Extent Is Chris Mccandless Justified In Into The Wild

Cameron Keating
Mrs. Moffat
English 5-6
11 January 2023
Was Chris Justified?

Have you ever wanted to run away from your family? Well, in Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the wild,” Chris McCandless left without a trace and abandoned his family. Chris McCandless was justified in leaving his family, because he had a very difficult family, nature made him extremely happy, and he wanted to get away from civilization. He had a difficult family, meaning his family wasn’t the best or the nicest to him. One of the biggest issues in his family was his father. One example of this is, “Walt continued his relationship with Marcia in secret” (121). So his dad was living with two families, one being Chris’, and the other being his first wife’s. Which made Chris very upset that he found out from another source other than his own parents. Walt wasn’t a very good or nice father to his children, in both of the different families.

In one of his letters to Ron he said, “The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun” (57). This shows Chris’ absolute love and appreciation for nature and how happy it makes him. No one else in Chris’ entire family ever had the same amount of love for nature as Chris did.
Another example of how Chris was justified in leaving was that he also wanted to get away from civilization. According to Jim Gallian, on page four, “He wanted to walk deep into the bush and ‘live off the land for a few months.’ ” This shows the fact that Chris wanted to just go straight into nature away from everyone else. Being away from civilization also made it to where he could just truly be himself without being judged or looked down upon. Chris was also an adult who is allowed to make his own choices with his life as long as it doesn’t harm himself intentionally or