Chris Mccandless Journey

Chris McCandless was an exceptional young man who lived life by the beat of his own drum but all that changed when his young life was cut short. Though his life ended, his story lives on forever. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is Chris McCandless’ living legacy; the book examines McCandless’ life as well as revealing his struggles with his parents, his adventures with the people he meets, and the hardships he faces in Alaska. Chris McCandless lived life as a modern day nomad; he would hitch hike all around the country to escape from the mundane. Some would consider his controversial lifestyle as naïve and stupid while others admire his idealism and passion for life. Chris’ life was ultimately a success. Even though
Chris made people feel so comfortable around him that whenever he was traveling and needed a place to stay it was almost guaranteed that someone would offer him a place to stay. He had a very magnetic personality, from what the book describes. People were pulled by his charming personality ever since he was young “as an eight-year-old, he grew vegetables behind the house in Annadale and then sold them door-to-door around the neighborhood…. ‘by the time he came home, the wagon would be empty, and he’d have a bunch of money in his hand.’” (116)* On his journeys Chris met countless people and all of those people were touched by Chris in one way or another. Each person he met became apart of his surrogate family. Jan Burres and her husband spoke so fondly of McCandless and were very keen on hearing from him. Another person that McCandless touched was Ronald Franz, an elderly man who lost his family in an accident. He fell so in love with McCandless that he even offered to “adopt him, if [Chris] would be [his] grandson.” (55)* Anyone that came into contact with Chris could see his blatant
In high school he was quite outgoing, most people only had nice things to say about him. Though there were some people who saw Chris’ darker side. One of cross country teammates recalls that Chris would get extremely upset when he would do poorly at a meet. He never showed his anger but instead just kept it inside. There would be times were Chris would just keep to himself. His sister remembers, “he was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial—he always had friends, and everybody liked him—but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t need tots or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.” (107)* In college he became more introverted. He began to live a more ascetic lifestyle and stopped contacting his friends. One of his college friends recalls that he went to visit Chris and to see how he was doing but when he stepped into his apartment he was shocked to see that his apartment was very bare. It only had a mattress and a few milk crates. Chris was going through somewhat of a crisis during this point of his life. The revelation of his father’s affair surfaced and he increasingly grew more and more upset with how society