Chris Mccandless American Dream

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The American Dream of Chris McCandless The film Into the Wild is an adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s 1996 non-fiction novel, based on the real-life travels of a young man named Christopher McCandless. McCandless grew up in a wealthy Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. and was a gifted athlete and scholar. He was raised to live a life of wealth and success like his parents, but had different aspirations. By his senior year at Emory University, McCandless has estranged from most of his friends and his parents. He lets his parents believe he was interested in attending law school at Harvard, but instead donated his 25,000 savings to charity, drove away without telling anyone where he was going, and never contacted his parents or sister again. McCandless abandoned the use of his real name and began to call himself Alexander Supertramp, a key step he takes in …show more content…

He was a 19th century American author who was a critic of society due to its pressures for everyone to be the same. Emerson rejected capitalist society and its tendency for people to have jobs that would take over their lives and become their sole purpose. In his novel Walden, Thoreau details his two-year escape from society, where he lived by Walden Pond, near Concord Massachusetts, living a simple life with no one supporting him. Chris’s adventure is similar to Thoreau, they both desired to escape society and its pressures. After leaving college, he only worked when he had to earn money for the next stage of his adventure. He moved around as he pleased, without any responsibilities. Even though he had the means and the education to start a life where he could have a successful career, he chose the extreme and decided to live a life in the wild. While Thoreau’s escape was successful and after two years he resumed his life in society, Chris’s was not. He died in the wild after accidentally consuming poisonous

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