Chris Mccandless Character Analysis

Chris McCandless’ actions can be seen as rebellious at first, but as time goes on, it is clear that there is hostility between his parents and himself that he does not want to face or try to fix. In a dysfunctional family, there are two extremes when it comes to the outcome of the children: the rebel or the conformist. Although the older child is typically the conformist and the younger child is the rebel, the McCandless family is a little different because both children are the rebels. Krakauer says, “Also like Chris, she clashed fiercely with Walt and Billie as an adolescent…[but] Carine made peace with her parents shortly after Chris disappeared” (129). There are many reasons as to why Carine did not turn into as big a rebel as Chris, but …show more content…
The main characteristic that he adopts from his parents is their narcissism. Walt and Billie McCandless are narcissistic because they see their children, especially Chris, as a project that they think they can work on and fix up. They have expectations for him that are never ending and they think they can buy his respect and devotion with materialistic items such a car. When they talk about Chris after he dies, Walt says, “How is it that a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain?” (Krakauer 104), and Billie says, “I just don’t understand why he had to take those kind of chances. I just don’t understand it at all”(Krakauer 132). They think about themselves and reflect on how Chris’ actions affect them when he dies. However, they fail to ask themselves why he would do such a thing and if it could have possibly been because of them. Both Walt and Billie do not understand that they are the cause for why Chris was so dysfunctional and rebellious which in turn led him to disown them …show more content…
One person that Chris was fond of especially was Jan Burres. She recalls that “he liked to tease me and torment me...like a little kid” (Krakauer 45), and she would mother him back by lecturing him because she cared about him and what he was doing. However, when Burres and her husband tried offering Chris more than a friendship, he became distant and left. Chris made many connections throughout his journey, but it is clear that he was constantly searching for a certain type of connection that he did not receive from his own parents. Even though his parents were not loving in the matter he needed and desired, he still found comfort and even surrogacy in Carine. She states that they learned to count on one another (Krakauer 107) and he states in a letter to her that she is was the only person that could possibly understand him (Krakauer 129). However, even Carine’s relationship could not sustain him enough to stay or even contact her when he disappeared. The dysfunctional background that Chris grew up with due to his parents is why he turned out the way he did, but if he looked closer at what type of people really cared about him then maybe he could have seen that they could have compensated for his parents’ lack of real love. Instead, he turns to a life of