Into The Wild Chris Mccandless

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Chris McCandless was an interesting and complex person in the context of modern society. Into The Wild detailed McCandless as an accomplished college graduate with a future full of possibilities ahead of him, and who suddenly abandoned everything he had and left to travel the vast country. However, while living in Alaska by himself, he starved to death as a result of careless mistakes. His two year journey across the country and especially his escapade into Alaska drew great attention and various opinions. Many outright dismissed him as a nutcase. They believed that anyone purposely venturing into the Alaskan wilderness with meager supplies must have been suicidal. On the other hand, others who have also studied his character, came to a different …show more content…
From a young age he overrated his own abilities. His father Walt McCandless remarked that “Chris was fearless even when he was little. He didn’t think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge” (109). Chris had no sense of danger. Moreover, his individualistic personality built a wall between himself and self-improvement as Walt remembered, “Chris had so much natural talent, but if you tried to coach him, to polish his skill, to bring out that final ten percent, a wall went up. He resisted instruction of any kind” (111). He viewed instruction as an intrusion on his independence. Later on, McCandless wanted to live off the land in Alaska by himself. Logic would have it that such a task would be difficult in the harsh and cold land since food sources would be scarce. Jim Gallien, who gave Chris a ride to the wilderness, repeatedly tried to dissuade him from where he was going, “[Chris] wouldn’t give an inch. He had an answer for everything I threw at him” (6). Drawing from his previous experiences in the wild, McCandless mistakenly believed that since he had survived under life-threatening conditions before he would be fine in Alaska. Unfortunately, he gravely underestimated the power of nature and how ill-prepared he was for the conditions of Alaska; his arrogance proved fatal. Chris McCandless was a naive idealist whose arrogance blinded
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