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Nguyen, Vanna

Reading/Writing Exp

25 January 2016

Ms. Moore

Finding Yourself

Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild, showed us a tragic story about a boy who

followed his dreams and tried to live in wild, seeking for individualism and happiness. Chris

McCandless was brave, naive, stubborn; he was a role model for many kids out there because he

followed his dreams and did what he wanted to do. McCandless demonstrated that anyone can do

anything only if you put your mind to it and followed your dreams.

McCandless was many things, but I felt that McCandless was very different from most

people; he didnt like being involved in society and tend to push people away, but his love for

traveling and nature was something very big that he had withheld inside. In the first chapter, he

had hitchhiked to Denali National Park to live a life in the wild, to be free of his parents and

society. He had met Jim Gallien, on his way there and it was revealed that Chris was really

unprepared for the trip, admitting to bringing a ten pack of rice, a .22 caliber, and a backpack (5).

When Chris graduated from high school, he planned to live out his dream by taking a trip to the

Pacific Coast and ending up in the Mojave Desert where he suffered from dehydration and lost

over 30 pounds, but that didnt mean he will stop from taking more adventures into the wild.

When he got back to Annandale where he lives after a long vacation, his sister younger Carine

says, He was so thin, He looked like those paintings of Jesus on the Cross (118). Although he
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had many troubles, he still persisted to follow his dreams because there was nothing that was

going to stop him.

What motivated him to escape the life that he had was mostly related to his parents and

the resentment he had for his father. He had hated their materialistic life, the ideal life that they

had created for him, and hated the fact that they tried to make him do the things that he didnt

want. As a boy, Chris just wanted to be independent, but his parents had wanted the best for him,

even wanting to buy him a car. He also harbors a more personal hatred for his father after

finding out about the double life his father had led. What also motivated him was his love for

literature and nature. He idolized authors like Thoreau and London, having copies of their books

that he brings with him on his trip and he wanted to follow their footsteps. His Alaskan

adventure was also inspired by Jack London's Call of the Wild because he idolized a fictional

narrative so much that he wanted be able to experience it like in the book.

What he was looking for in the wild, is hard to exactly pinpoint. As Krakauer wrote in the

book, McCandless didn't conform particularly well to the bush-casualty stereotype. Although he

was rash, untutored in the ways of the backcountry, and incautious to the point of foolhardiness,

he wasn't incompetent-he wouldn't have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn't a nutcase, he

wasn't a sociopath, he wasn't an outcast. McCandless was something else-although precisely

what is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps" (85). Krakauer is saying that Chris wasnt crazy, like

many people have assumed, he just wanted to explore the depth of life and what it means to be

able to find yourself. Life holds a different meaning for everyone and for Chris, he didnt

understand what life is until he explored the wild. He wanted to learn nature, live with nature,

and find what he was looking for. In his explanatory note to Ron Franz, Chris writes: there is no
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greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different

sun. Chris believed that he had to abandon society and civilization in order to truly experience

the beauty of life. Chris went looking for answers and happiness and in one of his last journal

entries, he writes,happiness is only real when shared (189). He was looking for happiness and

was trying to make sense of a world he just didn't understand. He eventually discovered that life

is meant to be shared with others, to be lived with others, and maybe that what was he was

looking for. He had learned that he made mistakes, that he was reckless, but now that he knows

that what life means, he was satisfied and thanked god for the life that he was given.