Into The Wild (Essay)

Do you feel, as one letter writer did, that there is “nothing positive at all about Chris McCandless’ lifestyle or wilderness doctrine …surviving a near death experience does not make you a better human it makes you damn lucky” (116); or do you see something admirable or noble in his struggles and adventures?

I’d have to disagree with the above statement. One of the key points of McCandless’ travels was to challenge himself, which he did, and by doing so he met a variety of new people and expanded his horizons. He did as he pleased. At some level, Chris was achieving a sort of freedom. However, he seemed to make things too hard for himself throughout the book to the point where it seemed like torture, as if this freedom needed consequences. What Chris was trying to do was admirable, but he made many decisions that were ridiculous and unnecessary.
On multiple occasions throughout the book, it is said that Chris didn’t get along with his parents because he, as an old friend of his says, “just didn’t like being told what to do”, and Chris found his parents to be overly controlling. The author states that Chris’s father, Walter “is accustomed to calling the shots. Taking control is something he does unconsciously.” If you put two and two together, it’s pretty simple to see that Chris must have hated his lifestyle. A letter he wrote to his sister even basically said that he couldn’t stand his parents. Of course he would set out to get away from them. In a letter Chris wrote to a friend of his on his journey, he holds the opinion that “so many people live with unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation.” I agree with this statement. Chris was unhappy with his life and decided to change it. In this sense, Chris’s actions were very admirable because he took charge of his own life, and lived it the way he wanted to.
Chris’s father stated that “Chris had so much natural talent.” In one of the books found on Chris’s area of death, one piece of text he highlighted said “I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself the superabundance which found no outlet in our quiet life.” Once again, if you put these together, it is quite clear that Chris wanted a challenge. According to friends and family of this traveler, most things came easy to him. It’s only logical that a person is going to want a change in pace after so many years of easiness. It’s a way of proving to yourself that you can do more than what you’ve already done. And once you’ve proved that, the accomplishment is refreshing.
On the other hand, Chris took this idea a bit too far on many occasions. On many of his long journeys, Chris took nothing more than 25 pounds of rice for food, and the gun he brought for hunting was clearly not going to be very useful if he wanted to kill big animals to keep his body satisfied. There would have been nothing wrong with being better prepared for his travels. It would have been one thing if he didn’t know how to prepare for the wilderness, but his family recollects that when Chris was growing up, they often took camping trips. Knowledge is a resource that Chris did not always use. He knew what materials would be needed, and knew how to use them for the most part, so what was the point of forcing such rookie mistakes? If he knew better, which he did since he often seemed to think he was going to die, then he should have took what he knew, and used it properly at least to some extent.
Also, when people offered to help him, he refused it. Westerberg, a close friend of Chris, had offered to buy him a plane ticket up north, which would get him to his goal destination, Alaska, in a much shorter amount of time. Chris responded to this offer by saying “flying would be cheating.” Chris had been trying to live freely with, as he put it “no strings attached” and it was his life, so how could he possibly be cheating? If you have a goal, and there is a more efficient and logical way of getting to that goal, then you should take that path. Otherwise, you’re just holding yourself back. If he had wanted freedom, he should have considered the freedom to return to society as he pleased.
In a journal entry, Chris writes “I writhed and twisted in the heat, with swarms of ants and flies crawling over me, while the poison oozed and crusted on my face and arms and back. I ate nothing…there was nothing to do but ache and suffer philosophically…I get it every time, but I refuse to be driven out of the woods.” He knew that he got poison ivy rashes somewhat frequently, so he must have known that rash ointment would be helpful. During those days of agony, he could have been continuing his travels had he just brought some medicine, or at least left the woods for a day to pick some up.
I understand that he wanted to challenge himself, but there is a fine line between challenging yourself, and torturing yourself. There would have been nothing wrong with buying a proper hunting gun, and accepting offered help. I think one of the challenge’s Chris failed to overcome was the challenge to let people help him when he obviously needed it. In the end, the only person holding Chris back was himself. He had gone into the wild underprepared, and knowing that he was most likely going to die on his final journey. He even said goodbye to his dear friends, as if he would not be back for a very long time. When he finally realized that he needed help, it was too late. He paid for his mistakes with death, and there’s no coming back from that.