Chris Mccandless In Into The Wild

“The trails I made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also...To take the trail and not look back. Whether on foot, on showshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing shadows-a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had gone. Let the rest of mankind fine me if it could”(John Haines, The stars, The snow The Fire In Into The Wild 127). In the novel, Into The Wild,by Jon Krakauer, challenges the slander the protagonist faces. In the book, the protagonist is Chris Mccandless, otherwise known as Alex Supertramp. He was a hero an a noble traveler escaping the fate his parents set out for him; making Mccandless follow his dreams and aspirations for going all around the world and living
like no other person would dare to live. Chris saw what others wished to see in their lifetime, and made friends along the way to meet his goal of traveling the Alaskan terrain and finding himself, in the process. Krakauer shows how Chris Mccandless perseveres through an unwavering view of his beliefs he also fights for the beliefs of his literary ideals although there may be negative remarks. Like Peter Christian and Mccandless they both proceeded to travel for Alaska and the area around Washington D.C. and even had the similar thinking of living the free life in Alaska, but the major difference is that McCandless wasn't prepared, unskilled, and wasn't able to forge the skills to be successful, Chris wasn't a hero or noble he wasn't even original Like peter's perspective”you quickly see what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid,tragic and inconsiderate”(Christian).
In Into The Wild Chris Mccandless the protagonist a simpleminded traveler who doesn't comprehend the true feelings and troubles his parents or himself face early on in the book although he is confident and quite intelligent the most important thing overlooked in order to be a successful traveler is common sense. This is a significant factor when he goes to the stampede trail only carrying 5 pound of rice a small rifle and his textbooks to distinguish the berries and his worn roughed up clothes meant for the dangerous terrain in Alaska weren't in the condition to be able to survive in the unforgiving environment. Nonetheless Mccandless was a follower as much as he thought of freedom from the government and his parents, he subsequently follows even the most idiotic and shortcomings of his heros and literary ideals like “London himself had spent a single winter in the north and that he had died by his own hand on his California Estate at the age of 40..in resemblance to the ideals he espoused to print”(pg 44). Not only does Mccandless follow and resemble his heros and favorite author but “He was also able to forgive,[and]overlook, the shortcomings of his literary heroes; Jack london was a notorious drunk; Tolstoy , despite his famous advocacy of celibacy, had been an enthusiastic sexual adventurer. As young man and went on to father at least 13 children, some of whom were conceived at the same time the censorious count was thundering in print against the evils of sex”(pg 122). Chris throughout the novel is a hypocrite who decides to overlook the authors that in their lives do what he thinks is idiotic but yet he overlooks that fact and he listens and obeys the ideals that will at the end him to go the the wild and tell him to find himself and even go far enough to stop eating meat and eat greens and berries,one of the most essential foods to eat he then forks it over and throws the towel the very thing that his hero told him to do was his major and last downfall. He stopped eating meat and started eating the vegetation growing there and the last blow after all the suffering he just survived were the berries in which paralyzed him and then made him starve himself until he was an anorexic humanoid being in the bus with all his belongings.
Mccandless doesn't toot his own horn either he is an intellectual person even in his younger years.
Mccandless was an exceedingly advanced student even in his middle school years even so”In the third grade, after receiving a high score on a standardized achievement test, Chris was placed in an accelerated program for gifted students...He wasn't happy about it billie said because it meant he had to do extra Homework so he spent a week trying to get himself out of the program”(pg 107). Although Chris had a remarkable gift with his studies he was ignorant and was able to dispose of anything that he no longer care for or was uninterested like the accelerated program he was put in. Although he was able to be put into accelerated courses and programs he is undoubtedly immature for someone who has their life planned out and his parents being intelligent it makes him immature and ignorant to brush aside his parents hard work and
money.
Chris was self centered and idealistic and unable to grasp the concept that he can't do anything he wants to.
Nick Jans a schoolteacher and alaskan hunter, said that “McCandless was hardly unique; there's quite a few of these guys hanging around state, so much alike that they are almost a collective cliché. The only difference is that McCandless ended up dead,with the story of his dumbassedness splashed across the media...McCandless is, finally, just a 20th-century burlesque of london's protagonist, who freezes because he ignores advice and commits big time hubris”(pg 71-72). Chris is a fool knowingly going out to the most unforgiving,coldest, and most relentless places in the world. He makes the most simplest but most damaging mistakes, becoming just like the predecessors before him like london, like london's protagonist he mirrored the same image bestowed on the book and like a fly was hooked and couldn't escape,chris sought to copy that image and make it his own. Chris went to the depths of the most unforgiving isolated remote places and was able to turn a blind eye and be an arrogant person who thinks he can take the most brutal environment without any preparation, or knowledge of the ferocity the wild has,he greatly underestimated the wild thinking he can go in and out without anything but the bag on his back and luck by his side and forgetting the most important things like a compass or map or his common
sense.
McCandless has met many people on his journey like Ronald Franz who he met on January 1992. Franz was a 80 year old man who has lost his son and has adopted other children and teens to replace the hole he had for his lost son. McCandless made quite an impression on him like everyone else he meets, but when Ronald Franz gets the word the McCandless died and was found in alaska frozen to death Franz said,
“I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when i learned what happened, i renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist...I turned my van around, drove back to the store, and bought a bottle of whiskey. And then i went out into the dessert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me sick. Hoped it'd kill me, but it didn't, Just made me real,real sick”(pg60).
Chris after his undeniable death made people he met and knew hurt more than they ever could, like Franz just a christian was able to deny God and he drank himself whiskey to mourn his death he cause pain to people he met just like Franz. Franz wasn't the only person he hurt but the most important people like his dad and mom and even his little sister. Billie which is Chris mother had such a connection and such high hopes for him to hurt her not being able to know where he was how he was doing and if he would ever come back. “she insists, tears rolling down her cheeks.”i don't know how i'll get over it. i wasn't dreaming i didn't imagine it i heard his voice! he was begging, ‘mom! Help me!’ but i couldn't help him because i didn't know where he was. And that was all he said ‘Mom! Help me’!”(pg 126). His mom terribly worried for him yet he doesn't see it in him that family really is a precious thing before it is too late and he wants to go back he ignorance drove him where he is now he wasn't a hero or a noble person he was an ignorant person who had everything he had a gift, a talent yet he blatantly saw through it and ignored it.
Krakauer shows and tells us about Chris wanting to be a free of everything escaping everything and leaves everything. He tells us he tries to find himself and that it's heroic someone who died with their dream at hand was honorable but it's not. Chris at the end of the novel finally realizes family and friends is what made the trip a journey he realized he wanted to go home, and it wasn't his idea to stay up there and die. His family Walt,Billie, and Carine cared so much about Chris they wanted to just help him, Chris's parents were hard workers who tried to shape up Chris to his full potential but were negated because chris’s fantasy world sculpted his idealistic ways.” I've told them a million times that i have the best car in the world acar , a car that has spanned the continent from miami to Alaska, a car that i am strongly attached to yet they ignore what i say and think i'm actually accept a new car from them i'm going t have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them because they will think they have bought my respect”(pg21). His parents only want the best for him because he works hard and deserves what he puts work into McCandless is a complete idiotic person with no thought of anyone else a simple minded Nomad that only sees himself as a wanderer chasing a dream that even Rosellini refused to challenge any longer.