Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

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At the end of “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer epilogue, my view towards McCandless’s journey and death is emotionally similar to McCandless’s parents as they accept Chris’s death. Chris’s parents weren’t really involved in his life so they never really knew why he cut everyone off. My initial guess is that Chris got tired of his parents controlling his life and just wanted to get away. Throughout “Into The Wild” Chris’s parents seemed like they didn’t support or care about Chris, or they didn’t know how to show it, however my opinion about Chris’s parents did change because the author shined light on his parents and how they came to senses with their son’s death and that they actually really did care about their son Chris McCandless.
As I began to get deeper into the story and they began to introduce Chris’s parents, Billie and Walt into the story they seemed very uptight and didn’t support Chris’s opinion on life. They wanted to control Chris’s life and hold on to their little boy. “Walt tried to control Chris who is freely independent” While Walt tried to control Chris that only caused Chris to distance himself even more. I got the impression that since Chris and his parents didn’t see eye to eye they hit heads. “In fact both Walt and Chris are stubborn which leads to a great clash between them” which really portrays their relationship with each other. I believe the situation with his parents only pushed him more towards leaving his ordinary life and going off the grid. His parents trying to keep a grip on Chris’s life only pushed him away even more.
Chris’s parents had only good intentions for him as every parent would for their child which is why they entered him into a gifted school. However all this opportunity never seemed...

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...eauty of Mother Nature all around him and cutting all ties from society.
When Chris left for his journey he wasn’t crazy or stupid as many would say. “McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large, but rather to explore the inner country of his own soul” pg. 183. The fact that Chris never bother to discuss his Alaskan walk about with his anyone especially his parents wasn’t intentional. However throughout the whole book it was made very clear that he was at odds with his parents in some way to go off on his journey but he didn’t want to hurt them, which I think Walt and Billie finally realized visiting the bus where Chris had passed. I think Chris just wanted to get away from his everyday life, clear his mind, a mind that didn’t involve the worries of expectations and the thoughts of his parents hanging on his shoulders.

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    To answer that question reader can look at the passage when Chris takes his first trip to his early childhood town and discovers from second hand sources that his father was having an affair with his mother (Krakauer, 121). Finding out this fact about his family changed the relationship with his family, at least to him. Chris forced the anger he had inside of him and down and brooded over it. Once Chris knows this instead of confronting his problems he turns to his father and picks him apart to justify his anger. Chris points out the hypocrisy of his parent’s lifestyle not because he was a “rebellious teenager” but because he had this ball of emotional hate he didn’t want to admit was his own, so instead he looked for anyone to place the blame on, and it just so happened that his father fit the circumstances. After an extended period of time while Chris was harboring this anger it changed him, and his ideology. His sanity was stating to begin to slip away from him. While Chris was naturally smart and talented all of that goes to waste if he is not in his right mind. Walt tells the readers that Chris was naturally talented, but defensive when it came to accepting advice (Krakauer, 111). of all the things that stuck with Chris throughout his decent into madness this was what trait that persisted in his ego. So while Chris was defiantly smart and was capable of being athletic he still made these decisions which ultimately ended his life, which means that Chris was no longer making sound, rational choices like he would have been able to make earlier in his life, because he mental state had already declined to an irreversible point.

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