Wenjie Hu,
TJ Puckett,
English 102,
09/19/2013
A Pilgrims of Ultimate Freedom Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer is the true story of Chris Johnson McCandless, a young man who is found dead in the Alaska wilderness, McCandless raised in a wealthy family from Virginia, and he is born talented and smart, who from an early age shows deep intensity, passion, and a strict moral behavior. After graduating from high school, McCandless spent the summer alone on a road trip, during which he discovered his father secretly had a second family. McCandless returns home and starts as a freshman in college, but his anger over this betrayal and his parents’ keeping this secret away from him grows worse and worse over time. By the time that McCandless graduated from college, he drives away without telling anyone where he is going, abandoning the use of his real name along the way. He never contacts his family. Not too long after McCandless abandoned his car in the desert and he begins to hitch hikes around the Northwest, getting jobs everywhere but not staying at a location for long, During this time, he gets to know a few people. In 1992, McCandless hiked into the wilderness, he spent the next sixteen weeks in the magic bus, not seeing a single human being the entire time. He has success for the most parts. However, McCandless probably have eaten some moldy seeds, and the mold contains a poison that caused him to starve to death. He realized that he is going to die, he wrote a goodbye note, and a few weeks later some hunters found him on the bus. The author Jon Krakauer recognizes that Chris McCandless was “rash”, but he also argues that McCandless “wasn’t a nutcase, he wasn’t a sociopath, he wasn’t an outcast. McCandless was something else- although precisely what is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps”(85). In fact, Chris Johnson McCandless is a pilgrims of ultimate freedom, and the dangerousness. Krakauer conclude that Chris McCandless wasn’t a nutcase nor a outcast. “It is hardly unusual for a young man to be drawn to a pursuit considered reckless by his elders; engaging in risky behavior is a rite of passage in our culture no less than in most others. Danger has always held a certain allure. That, in large part, is why so many teenagers drive too fast and drink too much and take too many drugs, why it has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war. It can be argued that youthful derring-do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes. McCandless, in his fashion, merely took risk-taking to its logical extreme.” (Krakauer, 182) This quote underscores that McCandless’s behavior is not completely unusual. Even though he lives in a way that few others would do, and particularly not too many grown up kids have the opportunities like he does, such as well educated, talented, independent,etc. The father-son relationship is what driven behind his behavior to unusual. Chris always looks up to his father, Walt as his ideal role model; and all the sudden this image collapse, and turned Chris into an anti-material and wilderness living person. Considering if Chris had made his way out Alaska alive, he would of look upon with admiration, and consider a person who had accomplished something impossible. But cause he death, many people have uglified him, and have seen in his derring as arrogance and stubborn. Furthermore, his actions are consider as selfish, and rash. Furthermore, MacCandless also not a sociopath, “It was ... The more they (Gallien & MacCandless) talked, the less Alex struck Gallien as a nutcase. He was congenial and seems well educated. He peppered Gallien with thoughtful questions about the kind of small game that live in the country, the kind of berries he could eat- ‘at kind of thing.’ ” (Krakauer, 5) It`s not hard to find that Chris is well educated, and passionated about his Alaska trip. Not like he is not fit in to the society, it is more likely to say Chris is not interested into communication with anyone else he met, except a few that he feels the connection with. However, I agreed that McCandless is a Pilgrim. In the book, Jon Krakauer wrote, “He was elated to be there. Inside the bus, on a sheet of weathered plywood spanning a broken window, McCandless scrawled an exultant declaration of independence: Two years he walks the earth, no phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, ‘cause “the West is the best.” And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure, the climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the great white North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. – Alexander Supertramp, May 1992.” (Krakauer, 163)
This quote shows us how McCandless feels excited about his journey after he walks into the wilderness, And he is proud of what he had accomplished. And even though Chris claimed the civilization is poisonous, but he tended to rejoin the civilization. For his final destination-Alaska, which will give him the strength to a be a bettering being on the spiritual side. “I know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong.”(In the movie Into the wild) And though he wrote, “Thou shalt not return”, the journal is not that he is walking into the wilderness and try to live the rest of his life there, but that he shall return to the civilization. Finally, the quote shows how struggled his needs for independence and freedom are with his inability to let people come too close, as he enjoys his entrance into the wilderness to escape and emphasizes that he is alone, and that he can enjoy his “Ultimate freedom” without getting interrupted by the society. Chris MacCandless died alone in the Alaska wilderness. But in the end, he penned a brief adios: “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND TANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!” (Krakauer 199) And the last picture of himself, he was serene and without fear and pitied. We can’t tell whether or not Chris had accomplished what he went after, but least he was at peace, and he did not regard the 112days of ultimate freedom he lived.