McCandless’ disregard for his family can be seen when he becomes fed up with his parents always trying to change his mind and convince him to do …show more content…
His decision to go into the wilderness unprepared was not because he was a narcissist, but because it was the only way he could discover true life. McCandless writes about his beliefs to an old friend, “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. 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” (Krakauer 57). Chris’ innate desire to fill a need to go out on his own to see not only a “horizon” that is physically different, but that is figuratively as well. The horizon represents relationships; Chris needed the faces of perceived family and friends to change just as often as a horizon. This might explain why Chris was able to abandon his friends and family, which may have been seen as heartless and incomprehensible to most, but to him it was necessary to fulfill the idealist need which was driving him. Although this argument is valid, Chris McCandless was a reckless narcissist more than he was a transcendental idealist.
To summarize, Chris McCandless was a reckless narcissist, because he unpreparedly chose to explore more about his intrigue with the wild than to think about his family’s emotions and well-being. From Chris’ plan to suddenly abandon his parents with no explanation to his disregard