Becerra 1

Diego Becerra

Mrs. Campese

English III D.C.

28 November 2021

Into the Wild Essay

Composed by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild is an account of Chris McCandless’ life and

what happened after his corpse was found in an abandoned bus on a trail in Alaska. The

discovery of the remains of Chris left an impression on thousands of people, especially Krakauer.

This led to the creation of hundreds of articles, newspapers, blog posts, reactions, and

discussions on everything Chris McCandless. Some believed he was an example to be followed

for leaving everything behind and chasing after his self-discovery through spontaneous

experiences with people all around while he hitchhikes his way to his final adventure in the last

frontier with the least amount of tools at his disposal. Others, however, have been quick to

criticize Chris’ actions. McCandless is seen by those opposing his following as just another

greenhorn who did not know what they were getting themselves into without proper training and

research. The one thing his critics think Chris is unique for was his unmatched stubbornness to

get lost into the wilderness of Alaska while still thinking that he was gonna make it out in one

piece. This has led to large speculation that such disregard for the warnings he was given about

the Alaskan wilderness, was caused by him being severely disturbed. Chris was known to his

followers as an adventurer, visionary, and a hero, but to his critics, he was just a mentally ill,

foolish, and reckless young adult.

 A lot of advocates for Chris believe that he was someone to be looked up to and

followed, they viewed him as a hero. Chris was made out to be a protagonist, the main character

who went to the great outdoors to defeat his last and greatest enemy. This antagonist in the story

of Chris Mccandless was actually himself, the part of him that he believed to be excessive in

material, fake, and unnecessary. His goal was to hit the road with as few resources as possible to

purposely put himself through difficult mental and physical battles to try and find his ultimate

self. Even Chris himself thought he was going to war with his soul, when he was in Alaska, he

wrote down brief notes in a journal of what he was doing and how he was feeling at the time. In

the journal, he described his journey in the wilderness as “the climactic battle to kill the false

being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.” (Krakauer 163). Throughout his

journey and life, Chris has shown to have the very noble qualities of a hero. When Chris was a

teen, he would wander the streets of his hometown giving to the poor and needy instead of going

out with his friends to drink and party. Most people would never have the courage to do that in

their entire lifetime yet Chris was already doing that in high school, his character showed honor

at a young age. Chris was also very virtuous in situations when he knew he would not be using

some of his materialistic possessions and needed to get rid of them, he would give them away.

Right after he graduated from Emory University, he donated his trust fund to OXFAM instead of

just leaving his money in the account for no one. These multiple acts of Chris Mccandless have

turned him into a hero in the eyes of others and even himself.

In the eyes of many, McCandless was viewed as an adventurer looking for new

experiences and thrills. Chris went out of his way to make sure that he didn’t know what lay

ahead of him. He would limit his ability to orientate himself by doing things such as not bringing
a compass, a topographic map of the land, and bringing as little gear and food as possible with

him on his trip to Alaska. He purposely did this to create what he called a true adventure in

which he had to figure things out for himself on the go and have constantly changing scenarios.

McCandless got rid of all certainty possible in his journey because to him, an adventure with it

was no adventure at all. This lack of preparedness may have caused his death, however, in the

mind of Chris, that didn’t matter, what seemed to be important to Chris was whether he was truly

experiencing living off the land. Even an author analyzing Chris’ need for exploration and

uncertainty commented that “McCandless had an addiction and it was to exploring throughout

his life and constantly learning in the process. For all the addictions to have, this was a positive

one, and it gives clarity to those of us who still seek to find new landscapes to explore,

mountains to hike and places to see.” (Mason 4). To Chris, his addiction for exploration was seen

in everything, when he was the cross-country captain, he would purposely have himself and his

teammates get lost running through places they were unfamiliar with such as the woods. Chris

even tried convincing others to take on his lifestyle such as Ronald Franz, who he met in Salton

City, California after trying to hitchhike. In his farewell address to Franz, he tries to persuade

him to take on a nomadic lifestyle and tells him that “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 was so in love with his way of life that he

felt the need to share this experience with others and encourage them to go out on their

adventure.
 Chris McCandless was viewed as a visionary by his followers. He had a love for

transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and Jack London and their principles, ideas, and

ways of life. He took them seriously from an early point in his life, he was solely focused on the

future of fulfilling his dream of becoming solitary in the wild. Chris would abstain completely

from any sort of sexual activity or alcohol consumption. Sometimes he would not even go out

with friends and spend his time alone studying the works of the people he looked up to. Even if

he did hang out with his friends, it would be done in a way that Thoreau or London would

approve of such as going and giving away some of his material possessions to the poor. At one

point Chris even sheltered a homeless man in his parents’ trailer. Chris would go out and commit

these acts of selflessness while others would be partying and drinking. One of Chris’ friends

describes one of his interactions with him: “I was talking about parties, but he didn’t care... He

didn’t drink anymore – he’d settled into the pursuit of knowledge. It was strange. He was like

someone who was seeing things in a totally new way, almost like a born-again Christian.”

(Brown 4). Chris was so focused on his future in the wild that it became almost religious to him

and he was admired for it because everyone noticed how determined he was in finding himself

through his transcendentalist ideology.

Chris may have been seen in a positive light by some but he was seen as a purely reckless

young adult by those that dislike him. McCandless certainly sabotaged his ability to thrive in the

wilderness by going out with little to no supplies for such a long period of time. Saverin, a writer

for Outside Magazine describes his recklessness as “Part of what infuriates many about

McCandless was the fact that he intentionally made his trip more dangerous than it had to

be—bringing only rice for food, leaving behind a topographical map and compass.” (42). Had
McCandless survived, he would have also wasted thousands of American tax dollars trying to

rescue his careless attempt at trying to make it out in the wild. Chris has shown to have a

disregard for everyone and everything around him, ironically including nature since he decided

to come to Alaska with no knowledge of how to preserve meat which resulted in the waste of a

moose. Not only did he just unsuccessfully poach the poor animal but he also left his car

abandoned in Lake Mead. Chris got so careless in what he was doing that he even robbed a cabin

of food and supplies which is oddly against all of his principles. Chris just did not seem to care,

he also went across the US-Mexico border packing a handgun then coming back into the US.

This comes to show that Chris did not think about the consequences of his thoughtless actions.

A large number of Chris’ detractors have come to believe that he was extremely foolish

for believing he could make it in Alaska. This is mostly due to the fact that he only brought a

sack of rice for a stay of almost 4 months. Jim Gallien was the last man to see Chris McCandless.

Right before he left for the wilderness of Alaska, he received strong warnings from Jim Gallien

who Chris hitchhiked off of. Of course, Chris ignored all of his warnings and left anyway and

114 days later he was dead. Even at a young age, Chris seemed to overestimate his level of skill.

When he was a kid, he would climb the Blue Ridge Mountains with his father, Walt McCandless

would get tired yet Chris would want to keep pushing on to the more dangerous part of the

mountain yet he was clearly much more inexperienced than Walt. Walt even commented saying

that “He had a tendency to over-estimate his abilities… He was fearless; he didn’t think the odds

applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the precipice.” (Brown 3). Many

believe that this fearlessness, lack of judgment and over-confidence, sadly resulted in the

unnecessary death of Chris McCandless.

 Many critics of Chris Mccandless have come to believe that he suffers from mental

illness. In Chris’ journal, he writes from a third point of view on his successes and failures

throughout his journey after he leaves Emory University up until his death at bus 142 in Alaska.

Some have speculated that Chris suffers from schizophrenia due to his talking from the third

point of view which may be a sign. Another indicator of Chris’ schizophrenia or mental illness is

when he ran away from everyone and changed his name as well as overall being very weird.

Some Alaska natives that picked up Chris on his hitchhiking adventures even said that “When I

asked him his name he gave us some weird name, was generally strange and did not want to

chitchat at all. He was too weird, and after about a half hour on the road with this strange dude

we stopped by a general store… He was so bizarre (my aunt) could barely tolerate him in the car.

He was smelly too, and gave no information about himself and distrusted us. It was weird. He

was weird ... he had some weird energy.” (Medred 4). Chris had a very strong lack of trust in

those around him, when people tried to help him he refused, when he was warned about possible

dangers such as the lack of supplies or possible starvation in the Alaskan wild, he kept on going

anyways. Another common idea of Chris Mccandless was that he had suicidal thoughts that may

have stemmed from his mental illness. In one of Chris’ encounters with a college friend, author

Chip Brown writes “Something bigger was at stake; he let drop fatalistic hints about his sense of

the future. “A couple of times, he said he didn’t think he’d make it to thirty,” Joshua Marshall, a

college friend, says.” (4). Chris could have also had clinical depression, thus triggering the

thoughts of ending his life by going out to the wild completely unprepared. This would explain

his complete disregard for Galliens’s and others’ warnings that he was not well equipped enough

to take on the rough terrain of Alaska.

 In my personal opinion, I agree that both sides of the argument on Chris McCandless are

true only to a certain extent. I believe that on one hand, Chris was not mentally ill, but just a

visionary trying to fulfill his dreams of finding himself, but on the other hand, I think Chris was

foolish and reckless to not bring enough supplies to survive and get back home. Beginning with

the side of me that believes Chris was not crazy but as described by Pete Mason, “he was a

explorer looking for something and once he found it, self-preservation had taken enough of a

backseat in his planning that became the thing that prevented him from venturing back out to the

rest of civilization… After all, finding his purpose in life after many months and years of

self-discovery could not end with the taking of his life.” (5). I strongly agree with what Mason

wrote here except for the part that taking care of his safety had to take a backseat in order to find

what he was searching after. I understand that McCandless had found out exactly what he loved

to do, but what I do not comprehend is why he could not take the time to figure out some way he

could still do that and have some sort of safety net in case he gets to a point where he might die.

It is sad to see all those times he was offered help or warned about the danger he was putting

himself in yet he just shrugged it off and said he would be just fine, but in the end, his last note

“was found taped to the window of the bus, beside a stick with a rag on the end of it: “S.O.S. I

need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is

no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and

shall return this evening. Thank you.” Unsure of the date, he wrote, “August ?” (Brown 12). The

worst part of that was seeing that he signed his name as Chris McCandless instead of Alexander

Supertramp, which goes to show how desperate he was in the end due to his starvation slowly

eating away at him.

 Sources MLA Citations

Brown, Chip. “I Now Walk Into the Wild”. The New Yorker, 8 Feb. 1993.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books, 1997. Print.
Mason, Pete. “Remembering Christopher McCandless: 20 Years Later”. HuffPost, 20 Oct. 2012.
Medred, Craig. “The Beautification of Chris McCandless: From Thieving Poacher into Saint”.
Anchorage Daily News, 27 Sept. 2016.
Saverin, Diana. “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem”. Outside Magazine, 18 Dec. 2013.