Chris Mccandless Rebel Essay

What does it mean to be a rebel? According to the dictionary we can clearly see a rebel as someone who resists any authority, control, or tradition. Chris McCandless is a primary example of a rebel and also a transcendentalist. He came to hold a certain reverence of nature, seeing it as a very precious thing to be protected. Also, as he traveled, he avoided densely populated areas, and relied primarily upon himself to get what he wanted. Chris scorned modern society, and their beliefs on the techniques to a successful life and what true happiness is. In many ways Chris McCandless can relate to other transcendentalist such as Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson who once said, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Chris McCandless Rebels in many aspects of the word. First, we see that he rebelled against his parents by not pursuing a career, and not settling down, but doing the exact opposite of both. His parents may have influenced this decision without even knowing it. Chris’s parents were not very involved in his life growing up, because they were always working. Their jobs however are not ordinary jobs, as a result we can see why he may have the urge to go and explore what the world has to offer.

Next, we see the “Inner Light” coming out of Chris that Henry David Thoreau talks about in “Civil Disobedience”.

We can describe Chris McCandless and the drastic change in his life as true characteristics and dedication to becoming a transcendentalist. At the beginning of his new life he had 25,000 dollars in savings, with which he donated all to charity. Not only did he donate all of his life savings to charity, but he also burnt all of the money and ID cards he had in his wallet. How does this relate to a rebel? Society today says that the more money and “things” you have the better you are, so by Chris getting rid of almost everything in his name he could not be considered

materialistic.
Lastly, Chris rebelled by heading to Alaska in April of 1992. This will be his final destination. Winter will be arriving in Alaska as Chris heads there and he is not even close to being prepared for the situations and weather that he is about to face. Though he may be doing everything in his power to stay alive he never loses focus of the fact that he believes everything in nature is precious (transcendentalism). We see an example of this in a quote, “I now wish that I had never shot that moose – one of the greatest tragedies of my life.” He said this after tracking and killing a moose and then prepping it incorrectly causing the meat he did not eat first to spoil.
So, What does it mean to be a rebel? In this case it means to go against everything society believes in. Rebelling against your family by abandoning them was the first instance in which we saw the rebellion. Next, we see Chris do the unthinkable by getting rid of his life savings, and burning his cash and ID cards. Lastly we see that he rebelled against society by going into an unforgiving wilderness in which he had to have known he would not return from. To answer the question, “What is a rebel,” you should take a look at Christopher McCandless because he is the definition of a rebel.