Analysis Of Chris Mccandless's Great Alaskan Odyssey

Many times when people don’t understand something, they try to relate it to something they do understand, to fit it in a mold that makes sense. That is what people did when they tried to understand Chris McCandless’s “great Alaskan odyssey”. They assumed he died because he was arrogant and unprepared like many others who had traveled into the dangerous and unforgiving Alaska bush. However, Chris was no idiot, he knew exactly what he was doing, he simply had such a unique perspective on life, not everyone could understand him. To Chris it wasn’t about proving himself or defeating nature, it was entirely the opposite. Chris was determined to experience nature and life in its purest form, and if that included death he accepted that too. He stated
However, this was simply not the case. Chris did have several basics with him: simple clothes, basic camping supplies, a tent, several books including one about local plants, a ten-pound bag of rice, a used gun, and some rubber boots. And although it may not seem like enough for most, Chris deemed it plenty enough, as he only ever wanted the basics in life. However, Chris may have survived had he had a map that would have allowed him to find nearby cabins or a place to cross the raging river. But that was one thing Chris very purposefully left out of his bag of supplies. Jon Krakauer wrote, “In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map. In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map... But Chris...came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: he simply got rid of the map” (174). Chris felt a map would have given him too much comfort, it would have kept him from his determination to survive, and most importantly, it would have secured him to the outside world that he so desperately wanted to escape. Therefore, Chris wasn’t just being ignorant, as Krakauer said “...he was fully aware when he entered the bush that he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error. He knew precisely what was at stake” (182). Also, he didn't die in the winter when one
Obviously, critics say he was unprepared because they think a man prepared wouldn't have died. But that's not true, anyone could have made the mistakes that Chris made, it doesn’t make him any less prepared. He didn’t survive the wild, but he was certainly fit to handle it. He was able to survive the wild for 114 days and a person truly unfit to venture into that environment wouldn’t have made it anywhere near as