Chris Mccandless Purpose

The Story of Chris McCandless: How to View His Story Every single person has a story, and the way it is told is even more unique than the story itself. Prior to Jon Krakauer’s publishment of Into the Wild in 1996, no one knew of Chris McCandless’s hitchhiking travels after he finished college and shut out his family. His motives and thoughts as he traveled from southern California to the wilderness of Alaska will forever be unknown, but Krakauer worked tirelessly to bring Chris’s story to life through words. Sean Penn attempted this same task in 2007, by transforming the book into a movie, bringing the story to life visually and with a soundtrack While both sought to tell the story of Chris McCandless, they both approached their tasks with differing purposes. Krakauer’s purpose was to show Chris’s life through the perspectives of all those that he connected with, while Penn’s purpose was to show Chris’s life through Chris’s own perspective. With these differing motivations, this caused each …show more content…
Their emphasis on differing concepts only further lead to accomplishing their purposes. Personally, I found the book more successful in capturing my vision of the spirit of Chris, which involved an intelligent young adult on an adventure while facing troubles completely out of his control, because it was more realistic. It showed the ups and downs in his journey, paired with the details that Krakauer included about how others responded to his presence, made me feel the most attached to the story. I appreciate seeing Chris’s journey through both his eyes and those around him than just the former. I also did enjoy the stark contrasts of time that both the book and the film provided, through both visuals and natural order. I believe that Chris McCandless would be proud of both productions, because they both work to show his history to