"Into the Wild" - Book Based on a Real Story

Into the Wild is a book written based on a real story about the life of Chris McCandless, a 24-year old man who decided to live alone in the woods, by Jon Krakauer. McCandless has a very tough life since the day he was born. When he is still very young, he sets himself a goal that is to go to the wild and live a peaceful life without thinking too much about anything.

During his adventure to the wild, he changes his name to Alexander Supertramp in order to block himself from his parents tracking.

He spends about one hundred and thirteen days in the Alaskan and loses about seventy-three pounds, his body is found nineteen days after his death of starvation. Throughout the book, the path leads Christopher McCandless to the adventure of his life shows he is a very strong-willed person.

To begin, Christopher is a young person with decided opinions and heartfelt convictions, who has been heavily influenced by anti-establishment, idealistic thinkers such as Thoreau and Tolstoy.

Chris is the type of person who acts decisively but without necessarily thinking through the consequences of his actions. Late in the story, for example, he heads out for the Alaskan wilderness having thought through some, but not all, of the dangers. Chris is a person of strong passions. If he likes you, he pours himself out generously and makes himself very likable. If he doesn’t like you, he cuts you off completely and coldly- as he does with his parents, revealing little sensitivity about how much worry or pain he might be causing them.

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He tends to feel he knows he is right and has no problem lecturing much older people on how they should be living their lives. Chris’s personality is a mix of heady, enthusiastic optimism and a full embrace of “sucking the marrow” out of life. As he is dying, he journals with mature wisdom, generosity, and acceptance. He also displays youthful impulsiveness, a risk-taking mentality, and withering judgments of those, like his father, who are materialistic and do not think as he does.

McCandless is very upset and struggles with his current society especially his family. McCandless’ sister, Carine, is the only one that he feels comfortable to be with. She reveals the ugly truth that their parents constantly fought and were more than often physically and emotionally abusive towards each other and their children. It was briefly mentioned in Into the Wild that their father, Walt McCandless, had another family but Carine goes in depth about how their mother, Billie knew about Walt’s wife and frequently rubbed it in her face that he was cheating on her. Knowing of Walt’s other family, Billie still continued the relationship and in fact bore his children (Carine and Chris), at the same time Walt’s other wife was pregnant. When Billie found out about how Walt did not intend on leaving his pregnant wife, he mustered up the horrendous lie that he would not because she had cancer, which was not true in the slightest. However, despite this betrayal, Walt’s other wife and children always included Carine and Christopher in family affairs and loved more kindly than their actual parents did.