The two had a closer relationship than the average brother and sister, due to their fathers’ random outbursts of rage. Most people would have attempted an escape under those unbearable conditions. Once Chris made it to Alaska he was immersed in nature and everything pure that he set out to find. This simple contentment is not insanity, but human desire for belonging. Although some have criticized Chris for not informing his family of his plans, it is understandable why he didn’t.
Sickened by the conservatism, materialistic context, and hypocrisy of humanity, he embarks on a nomadic journey across the country to acquire an honest home, a new identity, and happiness. However, because he believes the essentials required to live a satisfactory life depend on solitude and the earth’s wilderness, both his ignorance and nature’s unkindness lead to his death. Chris’s naïveté and ignorance create a sense of fortitude that ironically propels him to his death. As an exceptional graduate from Emory University and a child from an affluent family, his point of view of life substantially contends with utter dissatisfaction, contrary to his parents’ sentiment; the eagerness to escape society and abandon possessions in the interest of living off the land comprehensively consumes Chris. Although considerable accommodation proves his unfamiliarity of living in harmony with nature, Chris claims, “The core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences.” (Into the Wild, Penn).
To be happy most people buy themselves things. They surround themselves with material objects that make them happy. Christopher McCandless, however, is the opposite; he wants to get rid of the material world. In his conquest to rid himself of the false elution of material happiness he heads to Alaska to live alone and to be a part of the wild. This theme of happiness through simplicity with nature weaves itself throughout Into the Wild.
This behavior is why he can not accept reality in order to ignore the present and re live the past. It gets to a point where Willy ignores all his problems and only remembers and tries to re-create the good times of the past instead of living in the present. This obviously creates a problem between him and his family and others around him
– that they made was ignoring John Thornton’s warning about the ice, “‘The bottom’s likely to drop out at any moment. Only fools, with blind luck of fools, could have made it. I tell you straights, I wouldn’t risk my carcass on that ice for all the gold in Alaska (73).’” Their poor ownership led to their death and their dog team’s death additionally (except for Buck of course); it is fair to say that they were far from deserving the title of “best owner” much less a “good owner.” The Scotch Half-Breed, nonetheless, was a good owner. He attended to the dogs first, made a decent camp and decent time. However, his perseverance strained them into an unfortunate state “They were short of weight and in poor condition when they made Dawson, and
Imelda Daniel Mooneyham/3 September 28, 2012 Character is usually reflected by the way one reacts or acts upon a certain situation. Pride and ignorance can affect ones fate and get them into sticky situations, where instinct may become the best choice. With no imagination and miles of snow, one can lose patience and end up giving in just as the man did in “To build a fire” by Jack London. The man was so sure he could survive the extraordinary temperatures of Alaska, but ends up dead at the story’s end. The man was also warned at the beginning of the story, that when it gets too cold, one must be accompanied with a partner.
Everything, Chris McCandless did I tried to find reasoning behind even if I wouldn’t do it myself. I got defensive when people would say he was stupid and not give their reasoning for it. The type of person I am feels for every character in a book, especially Chris McCandless because he is real. When he was in Alaska I dearly wished he would be able to make it out alive even though I knew he wouldn’t. The people who believed Chris to be a “loopy young man who…lacked even a modicum of common sense” (184) didn’t understand his intention.
Perhaps this suggests the idea that the man is aiming to strip away life and personality in order to become closer to nature and discover himself. It also hints at the man’s desire to become disconnected from human contact which becomes more apparent as the story goes on. The name has a great lack of identity, almost as if he views himself as different from other human beings; he looks for the ‘insulation’ of an island and fears ‘overpopulation’. As the islander continues to make ‘a world of his own’ we read that people on the island address him as ‘the Master’. Although we gain a sense that the people on the island were grateful to him and knew how well off they were, the gushing title seems strongly suggestive of the false ‘happiness and perfection’ he finds in the first island.
In a sense, we as the audience get to know who Chris tries to be, which is his own person, and not living “like the others”. In the novel, we read about how Chris does a numerous amount of things to get out of the “perfect life paradox” that he is living, such as changing his name from Christopher McCandless to using an alias, Alexander Supertramp. Also, Chris soon after heading out to live his life, we learn that he plans to go to Alaska, and how he becomes a hitchhiker and becoming somewhat of a transcendentalist along the way. With the aid of Krakauer, Jim Gallien, the man who drove Alex as far as he could into the
This completes his search for identity in the village. Makhaya’s final source of oppression is removed when Matenge dies and this allows him to live the rest of his life in ease. The novel also deals with deals with the problem of tribalism. Head uses the character of Makhaya to show how the system of tribalism develops inequalities and creates a lack of knowledge. For Makhaya this ignorance created by tribalism is a constant source of irritation for him.