The Story of Christopher McCandless

Chris was running away from all these problems that he had and his past life. He did not want to deal with the poisonous family he had which was really just his father and all his lies. Throughout the story, McCandless does not really speak or like to talk about his family. His father and mother would always push him to be the perfect son he wanted him to become. They thought that his life ambitions would be going through some law school.

They tried giving him everything be that son but he did not need or want that. “I can’t believe they’d try and buy me a car” (Krakauer 21). Chris did not want to become what they wanted him to be what his parents wanted him to be. His parents already made him a path which he did not want follow, then indicates him leaving his past life and creating his own path in Alaska. The father of McCandless made a great amount of hurt in Chris’s life which made him rethink everything about his father and his family.

“The fragility of a crystal is not a weakness but a fineness. My parents understood that fine crystal glass had to be cared for or may be shattered. But when it came to my brother, they didn’t seem to know or care that the course of their secret action brought the kind of devastation that could cut them. Their fraudulent marriage and our father’s denial of his other son was for Chris a murder of every day’s truth.

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He felt his whole life turned like a river suddenly reversing the direction of its flow. Suddenly running uphill. These revelations struck at the core of Chris’s sense of identity. They made his entire childhood seem like fiction. Chris never told them he knew and made me promise silence as well.”(Krakauer) Chris was that glass that his parents really did not care for, just wanted him to be that perfect son without any flaws. The flaws weren’t him, it was his father that brought the secret of his ex-family into the picture which Chris found out. Foreshadowing Chris being shattered from the inside. He then makes the radical change of him leaving his family because all he felt from them was hurt and betrayal. At the end of it, everyone got cut from Chris, the shattered piece of glass because of his death that left them devastated.

Christopher McCandless also followed the ways of transcendentalism, so he tried to display self-reliance very nearly to the point of self-absorption. As early as high school Chris tried to reach for independence. After senior year, he packed up and left on an expedition around America. At first, he was told to call every day, so he did. Until he stopped calling and Chris also like charity, so he supported it. When he was in high school he would always volunteer in the soup kitchen which he was extremely dedicated cause he focused on his ideals of stopping hunger. The time came to leave his family and go to Alaska, he then donated all of his money to Oxfam America, a charity devoted to ending hunger “More than twenty thousand dollars remained at the tie of Chris’s graduation… he would shortly donate all the money… to OXFAM America”(Krakauer 20). To begin being independent Chris threw away everything he valued or did not need. Then started thinking of things that would be useful and important. He pushed away his family and created a new life for himself by changing everything. It truly showed he wanted to become independent if he did not even stay in touch with his sister who he was truly close with. Chris has always done things for himself and even in school through athletics and academically he pushed himself. Which ended up pushing him to be self-reliant no matter what. “…it was important for him to see how independent he could be” (Krakauer 125). The quote talks about Chris trying to test himself not just for how independent he can be, but for an experimental part. To see how much he can endure from being alone by himself throughout the country.

People with an illness, try to find a cure for their problem and for Chris, it may have been going to go to Alaska. McCandless takes on a different persona, names himself Alexander Supertramp, and the little notes that were left behind in McCandless’ journals were evidence that he was suffering from schizophrenia. In his writings, Chris refers to himself in the third person throughout the whole journal. Studies show that McCandless had a high chance of having schizophrenia because schizophrenics have a habit of leaving for a while and not coming back to their families or just stop caring about them. Also doing illogical things like leaving your car, just buying 10 pounds of rice or burning their money. McCandless did all of these things and more. Being lost could be a great place if you suffer from schizophrenia. He wrote, ‘he flees and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild”(McCandless). In the term of being lost, it can be able to remove all the extremely terrible events happening around him. Most people without an illness like that, usually bring a map to go on an adventure or really do not have a sense of wanting to be lost.