Why We Are Still Talking About Chris McCandless
When a zealot’s passion receives media attention it usually feels like a stale late-night re-run. Heavy eyelids catch glimpses of an age-old story; someone daring to challenge the status-quo. If the vigilante captures the public’s imagination, animated debates are triggered for a few short days, but inevitably the fantastic drowns in a deluge of everyday concerns and the zealot dissolves back into obscurity. However, sometimes a story appears that lingers, unwilling to be forgotten. Just over twenty years have passed since the story of Chris McCandless rose to public interest but already it has entrenched itself in modern literature as one of the greatest adventure stories of our time. It is the harrowing account of a young man who turned his back on a life of security and obligations preferring instead the ferocity and freedom of the wild. In a world filled with liars clawing to commandeer the title of legend, Chris McCandless breaks through the endless chatter, peeling back our sleepy eyelids and forcing us to see the paradigm of a man separated from the chaff by his pursuit of truth.
As modern society becomes increasingly separated from nature the desire to reconnect appears in staggeringly strong measures. This longing can occur at any age but surfaces most often in early adulthood as the realities of life in suburban America begin to squelch the idealism of passionate young adults. For Chris, his childhood wanderlust blossomed into an escape route from the lies of his parents. His fervent beliefs stemmed from the influence of his heroes: Tolstoy, Thoreau, and London, who glorified nature, civil disobedience, and self-induced poverty. His mother recognized early how deeply injustice affected him:
“Chris didn’t understand how people could possibly be allowed to go hungry…he would rave about that kind of thing for hours” (Krakauer, “Death of an Innocent” 6).
His refusal to accept the realities of modern life made escape inevitable.
Chris’s relationship with his parents mirrored his relationship to society. He chose to disconnect from both for the same reason-his pursuit of truth. After learning of the lies surrounding his parent’s marriage and his early childhood he confided to his sister that it made his: “entire childhood seem like a fiction” (Krakauer, Into the Wild 123). After discovering his parent’s lies he attended Emory University where his anger towards the inequalities of the world grew (Krakauer, Into the Wild 123). In the books recovered from the bus where Chris died his burning desire for a maxim is emblazoned on a page from Thoreau’s Walden. He highlighted the following section and wrote at the top of the page in large letters TRUTH:
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance… but sincerity and truth were not…” (Krakauer, Into the Wild 117).
A few sentences past Chris’s highlighted passage the following appears in Walden:
“The style, the house and grounds and ‘entertainment’ pass for nothing with me…. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree… I should have done better had I called on him” (Thoreau 310).
Even though Chris’s parents had worked hard to create a life in which their children would never know want his mother recalls his disdain for their expensive home and vacations noting he: “‘was embarrassed by all that’. Her son, the teenage Tolstoyan, believed that wealth was shameful, corrupting, inherently evil…” (Krakauer, Into the Wild 115). Chris was not satisfied to merely sit and philosophize about the corrupting power of wealth he had to rid himself of it completely.
Over two decades have passed since Chris abandoned his car, buried his possessions and set fire to his petty cash (Krakauer, Into the Wild 29) and already his rise from unknown to legend has made him a topic for debate. Those who do not view him as a hero regard him as a lunatic. Craig Medred, who has written many articles on Chris, has a dim view of him and his supporters. He describes them as:
“self-involved urban Americans, people more detached from nature than any society of humans in history, worshipping the noble, suicidal narcissist, the bum, thief and poacher Chris McCandless” (Saverin 14).
It is undeniable that Chris was a bum and poacher. However, it is unfair to blame urban Americans for not being born into a family subsisting off the land in the last frontier. Their desires to be closer with nature are no less valid if not more inflamed due to the separation from nature they have endured. Additionally, it should be noted that the title of hero requires an absence of perfection. From the first recorded written work of literature to the present, heroes have been fallible: Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Huckleberry Finn, James Bond, Spiderman. Their powers stem from their imperfections and is precisely what makes them relatable. Did Chris make some foolish choices on his journey? Absolutely, but that doesn’t make him any less heroic.
In comparison to the common rebellions of young men Chris may seem like an extremist. He was a man balanced on a swinging pendulum. He began his life in one extreme and his choices propelled him as far as possible in the opposite direction. Just before his attempt to cross back over the Teklanika river his journal entries point towards a man who had begun to swing back in the other direction, towards a medium that encompassed his opposing loves and ideals:
“the day after a journal entry that reads, ‘Family happiness’ — he shouldered his backpack… and began the 30-mile walk to the highway” (Krakauer, “Death of an Innocent” 10).
His life, while ending in tragedy is nothing short of triumphant. Chris set out searching for truth and found it. The upsetting side of truth is that it often requires the finality of death to shake us from our dream state.
References
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor Books/Random House, 1996. Print
“Death of an Innocent.” Outside Magazine. Outside Magazine. January 1993: < https://www.scribd.com/document/78824664/Outside-Magazine-January-1993 >. June 27, 2017.
Saverin, Diana. “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem.” Outside Magazine. Outside Magazine. December 2013. < https://www.outsideonline.com/1920626/chris-mccandless-obsession-problem >. June 27, 2017.
