In his book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer attempts to give us an insight into the events that led up to the untimely and unfortunate death of Christopher McCandless. After leaving home, to “disappear for a while”, McCandless, fresh out of college, embarks on a journey that would take him across the country, up to the extreme environment of the Alaskan wilderness, and into the wild. Along the way, McCandless meets people who ultimately help him along his way, and he leaves a lasting impression on them: some are charmed, others puzzled by his sometimes-quirky behavior. McCandless also leaves a lasting impression on Krakauer, who passes that impression onto the reader. Many readers find that McCandless is an inspiration: someone who is brave, who challenges the social status-quo by leaving home, who isn’t afraid to live life the way he sees fit. And in this regard, McCandless is absolutely an inspiration. However, there are some questionable behaviors that should cause us to re-evaluate our assessment that McCandless is a “go-to” inspiration that we should aspire to live as.
One of the most fundamental arguments surrounding Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild is the argument surrounding Christopher McCandless’ character: namely, is he a good person or not? While it is an interesting topic for debate, we should not focus on this, but rather if the behaviors McCandless exhibits are fundamentally good. He does many things that our society today would consider “good”. These are seen in his treatment of the people he meets along the way on his journey into the deep Alaskan bush. He is very personable, friendly, intelligent, and even writes letters back to the people who’ve helped him on the road. However, we must not let those factors get in the way of many of the behaviors we also see: selfishness and arrogance. A person can be “nice” by society’s standards today, but what really defines a person is who they are when no one is looking, and McCandless serves as a perfect example of that.
McCandless is trying to break away from a material world. He wants to free himself from the strains of want and is actively searching for his own personal happiness. The first instance that Krakauer gives to the reader is when McCandless donated money to a charity instead of going to law school. Christopher McCandless received a sum of money to the tune of twenty-four thousand dollars from his parents. The intention, because it was money from the death of a family friend, was for him to go to law school. (Krakauer 20) Instead of going to law school, however, McCandless decided to donate the money to OXFAM America, an international charity dedicated to fighting global poverty. (Krakauer 20) Undoubtedly, Chris did a good thing. Twenty-four thousand dollars is an exceptional sum of money for anyone to donate. That act alone was very selfless, and he should be commended for it. That is certainly one way to break away from material goods, ensuring that those who are less fortunate than you are able to have what they need to live. McCandless saw this and was inspired to take action. Law school was the intention, but McCandless saw it as a way to help the poorest and most vulnerable in the world.
Unfortunately, through his desire to be selfless, we find that he exhibits very selfish behavior. McCandless’ behavior can be questioned when he donated someone else’s money; the money he donated came from a specific person for a specific purpose. He defied his parents by his passion to live on his own. Instead of donating all that money he could have easily donated a portion of it and given the remainder back to his parents, or even better, let his parents keep the money and donate some of his own money to OXFAM. We must remember that the money he donated wasn’t actually his; he donated someone else’s money. It is more selfless to donate your own money even if it is a small amount than it is to donate a massive sum of money like McCandless did, that doesn’t even belong to you. McCandless’ passion to be free from any ties to his family led him to be this selfish behavior that we see in the text. That type of behavior should not be something we should aspire to live up to.
Later in the book, we see McCandless not accepting help, possibly to lessen the burden on those who help him. This is something that many of us aspire to be when we try to gain more independence. According to Jim Gallien, one of the people who met McCandless along his journey recalls Chris looking overwhelmingly underprepared for what he was trying to undertake. (Krakauer 4) Gallien recalls Chris only having ten pounds of rice, minimal survival gear, nothing was waterproof and had minimal insulation, a twenty-two-caliber rifle, which is not anything close to being able to hunt, and had no ax, “bug dope”: a type of bug repellent, snowshoes, or a decent compass. (Krakauer 5) Even after offering to help, McCandless refused the help. McCandless could have easily taken the help, but it is easy to assume that he didn’t because he was already getting a ride from Gallien, and didn’t want to make himself more of a burden. That is noble, and most of us would not want to be viewed as a “moocher.” It was very humble of him to not place more of a physical burden on Gallien.
McCandless didn’t accept the additional help, even though he knew that he needed it. This would cause anyone to worry about the well-being of another human. Undoubtedly, considering the context of the plot, Gallien was worried about McCandless. This placed a mental, rather than physical, burden on Gallien. He was doing McCandless a big favor already through him giving a ride and seemed more than willing to lend McCandless his gear for a while. McCandless tried to be humble, and not be too much of a burden on Gallien, but by not accepting the help that he knows he desperately needs, it is very fair to say that McCandless put even more of a burden on Gallien by forcing him to worry. If McCandless had simply taken the help, Gallien might not need to worry as much about him. If McCandless had accepted the offer, he wouldn’t be dead. If McCandless had taken Gallien’s advice, Gallien wouldn’t be upset that a kid he met by chance and enjoyed his company, was dead. He would have been able to give Chris another shot. Chris rejected it and paid the price by freezing to death from paralysis. When others are concerned about our well-being, that is okay. We should not be making others worried needlessly. McCandless could have put Gallien at ease by taking the gear and might have been spared if he did. With this in mind, we can wonder if McCandless knew he was going to die out in the wild; perhaps he didn’t accept the gear because he knew that Gallien would not get it back.
McCandless’ passion to “be free” led to his demise. Augustine tells us that what really leads to sin and an evil life is passion. (Augustine III.vi) He holds blameworthy desire. While this desire isn’t necessarily bad, McCandless’ desire to be happy leads him to this greediness that we can infer from his behaviors. We can blame him and his desires on the selfishness he sometimes embodies, or the arrogance that sometimes takes over. McCandless, who is a good person by our society’s standards, is full of passion: the passion to live freely, the want to live without material goods, the desire to experience something he could have never imagined. While McCandless’ passion is rooted in a genuine and valid curiosity for the unknown, which unfortunately leads to his main flaw: he has a passion to live happily. It isn’t fair to judge him on that alone; I think most people want to live a happy life. It is his active search for it which leads him to this lifestyle ruled by selfish behavior. His passion to live a happy life caused him to be dissatisfied with what his parents provided: a loving home, money for college, and a crutch for him to lean on when times were rough for him. He took that, threw it away, and ran. He was led to lie to his family so he could be happy knowing that they thought he was alright. He refused help from strangers so he could be happy knowing that he wasn’t being too much of a burden. He ran into the wild so he could be happy to live a life free from want.
Unfortunately, McCandless learned his lesson a little too late. He began to realize that he was lacking one thing that we all need as humans: connections with each other. He began to realize that he missed his family and those who helped him to his final destination. It is this realization that McCandless has that we should be inspired by, not his desire to be free or live a life not defined by society, some might say “living the dream.” His realization and ultimately his attempt to return home show us that through all the trials he endured, there truly was “no place like home.” That was very noble of him to realize he made a mistake and begin to return home rather than deny his mistakes and continue to live as a vagabond. It is also reasonable to look up to McCandless as someone who did defy the status-quo; someone who wasn’t going to live the way his parents wanted him to live but we must remember the behaviors that came out of that reality; he did have selfish and arrogant behaviors as a result of his lifestyle, which led to his unfortunate and untimely death.
McCandless can certainly be an inspiration to us, we just need to remember why he is an inspiration: for his realization that he made a mistake and not for his desire to break the status-quo or live independently, though those reasons alone are not inherently bad. We must be mindful of what can become of us when we let our passions rule our lives and those of who are around us. We all make mistakes in our lives, and we can look to McCandless to help us realize that and help us all to lead a better life.
Works Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. Anchor Books, 1996.
Saint Augustine. The Problem of Free Choice. Translated by Mark Pontifex, Longmans, Green and Co., 1955.