Chris Decandless: A Transcendentalist Hero

The weather is perfect, the sky is baby blue, and the sun is shining over the trees creating a beautiful hue; on a day like this would you be outside or inside? Someone like Chris McCandles would spend every moment of this day outside. In the book Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer; the reader is first presented how Chris McCandless is reckless by walking into the wild ill prepared. Though Krakauer attempts to persuade the read that Chris is and was a Transcendentalist hero. I believe that Chris is a transcendentalist hero more than he is reckless demonstrated by, Chris always living in the moment, living a self-reliant life, and always out in nature on a journey. Chris loves to live in the moment; to live in the moment means that one is not regretting the past and not being worried about the future. For instance, Chris preforms this action after he graduates college; “he’d loaded all his belongings into his little car and headed west without an itinerary” (22). Not only did Chris live in the moment before his odyssey but during it as well, “he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand… and put a match to it” (29). This …show more content…
For example, Krakauer includes a memory that Jim Gallien had, an older man that transports Chris to the Stampede Trail, were he was concerned about Chris’s gear load, “His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh condition of the interior” (5). This shows that living as a minimalist that you rely on your abilities rather than your belongings. Another example, when Chris decides to get rid of what he does not need, “Chris had given away his college fund to OXFAM” (34). Here demonstrates Chris belief on resources such as money, which he does not find necessary to be self-reliant. In all, to be a Transcendentalist hero one needs reliance on his or her own powers and resources, as Chris