Analysis Of Christopher Mccandless In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

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Recommended: Krakauer's point of view on McCandless

Most people are not bizarre enough to live in the wild with no money, identification, and just the clothes on their back, however; most people are not cut from the same fabric as Christopher McCandless. McCandless is an adventurous, Tolstoy idolizing, Transcendentalist nitwit whose naivete and foolish mistakes got him killed in the Alaskan wilderness, nevertheless he is an American examplar. Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, a book based on who McCandless was and the adventure he led, raves and identifies with Chris. Whereas Peter Christian, author of the article, Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger’s Perspective, criticizes Chris and believes that he is unworthy of being labeled a hero. First, McCandless dedicates his life …show more content…

“When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map, he would have walked out of his predicament using one of several routes that could have been successful” (2). “Trusting Samel and Thompson, veteran Alaskan hunters who’ve killed many moose and caribou between them, I duly reported McCandless’s mistake in the article I wrote for Outside, thereby confirming the opinion of countless readers that McCandless was ridiculously ill prepared, that he had no business heading into any wilderness, let alone into the big-league wilds of the Last Frontier. Not only did McCandless die because he was stupid, one Alaska correspondent observed, but “the scope of his self-styled adventure was so small as to ring pathetic-squatting in a wrecked bus a few miles out of Healy, potting jays and squirrels, mistaking a caribou for a moose (pretty hard to do).... Only one word for the guy: incompetent”

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