Chris Mccandless

People travel into the wild prepared to face the worst; they do not want to encounter a deadly situation. The man in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” went into the cold prepared for nothing, he felt that he was above nature and it could not affect him. Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s “Into The Wild” went into the wild unprepared for the conditions he was about to face. As a person who read the writings of Jack London, his death seems somewhat ironic. “To Build a Fire” by Jack London brings out the irony even more, we see how London wrote and how it relates to how Chris died. Chris McCandless is a person who did not believe in rules of society. He believed that he was above rules. He even felt he could defeat nature; he went into the wild expecting to come out alive while he lived on what nature gave him. “Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives” (Krakauer, 6). This is exactly what Chris was trying to do when he went into the Alaskan wilderness. He wanted to escape the rules and suffering he faced in society. He “ESCAPED FROM ATLANTA.” (Krakauer, 112), he did not want to stay there because he wanted to escape his parents and his false life. His goal was to go to Alaska and live there because he read of the beauty of the wilderness in Jack London stories. He traveled west and lived as a tramp, “AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE” (Krakaur, 112). This great adventure he was about to take is the adventure of living in the wilderness of Alaska with the skills he had and what he could carry on his back. Jim Gallien recalled, “He wasn’t carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you’d expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip” (Krakauer, 5). The man in “To Build a Fire” went to go meet his friends in the cold with nothing to protect him or keep him warm except the clothes on his back, and a dog that