Living on your own is very difficult. You need to be able to provide for yourself and know how to handle being alone without friends or family near you, especially if it is in the wild. Into the Wild is a journalistic work of nonfiction, written and narrated by Jon Krakauer. The book is about a man named Christopher McCandless and his life while he was living in the wild in Alaska. Chris dies approximately 110 days after he finds an old abandoned transit bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Many are asking to what extent is McCandless responsible for his own death. Many believe that Chris is culpable for his own death, while others do not. Christopher McCandless should not be blamed for his own death because he understood how to take care of himself
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Christopher McCandless agreed with the philosophies and was infatuated with living in that manner. In London’s novels, he tells the story of a person, or animal, and their return to the wild and it’s natural environment. White Fang, one of London’s novels, describes the wilderness with a “dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway [...] it was the Wild, the savage, frozenhearted Northland Wild”(9). Although the description is correct, London fails to include how harsh and dangerous the winters are in the North. Christopher did not know what the climate in Alaska would be like, so he went ill-prepared. Continuing on with Henry David Thoreau, his books were about simply living in a natural environment. In one of Thoreau’s journals, he describes his experience in the mountains as he “steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees” and how “that rocky, misty summit [...] was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than a crater of a volcano spouting fire”(133). Thoreau’s description is well put by the way that he added fear into his work. If Christopher had decided to read Thoreau’s journal, he would have known how frightening the wilderness would be if he was by himself. Lastly, we have Leo Tolstoy’s writings, which Chris McCandless was also obsessed with. A passage from Tolstoy’s Family Happiness had been highlighted by McCandless, which states “[he] wanted movement and not a calm course of existence [... he] felt in [himself] a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our life”(15). Chris had admired Tolstoy’s work and had definitely agreed with it. McCandless wanted to change his life by adding excitement and danger to it. Christopher acknowledged Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London’s opinions on the world and accepted them as his own,
Christopher McCandless agreed with the philosophies and was infatuated with living in that manner. In London’s novels, he tells the story of a person, or animal, and their return to the wild and it’s natural environment. White Fang, one of London’s novels, describes the wilderness with a “dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway [...] it was the Wild, the savage, frozenhearted Northland Wild”(9). Although the description is correct, London fails to include how harsh and dangerous the winters are in the North. Christopher did not know what the climate in Alaska would be like, so he went ill-prepared. Continuing on with Henry David Thoreau, his books were about simply living in a natural environment. In one of Thoreau’s journals, he describes his experience in the mountains as he “steadily ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees” and how “that rocky, misty summit [...] was far more thrillingly awful and sublime than a crater of a volcano spouting fire”(133). Thoreau’s description is well put by the way that he added fear into his work. If Christopher had decided to read Thoreau’s journal, he would have known how frightening the wilderness would be if he was by himself. Lastly, we have Leo Tolstoy’s writings, which Chris McCandless was also obsessed with. A passage from Tolstoy’s Family Happiness had been highlighted by McCandless, which states “[he] wanted movement and not a calm course of existence [... he] felt in [himself] a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our life”(15). Chris had admired Tolstoy’s work and had definitely agreed with it. McCandless wanted to change his life by adding excitement and danger to it. Christopher acknowledged Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London’s opinions on the world and accepted them as his own,