How Did Chris Mccandless Survive In Into The Wild

Two people in seemingly safe circumstances can suddenly find themselves trying to escape death. One example of this is in Z for Zachariah, a novel by Robert O’Brien that takes place in the only safe place in a completely irradiated world, a small valley in which Ann Burden finds herself stuck with a murderer. Unlike Ann, Chris struggles to survive in nature. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer features a survivalist named Christopher McCandless who tries to live in the Alaskan wilderness with a minimal amount of materials. Ann Burden and Christopher McCandless both find themselves in life or death situations. The fact that Ann is productive and considerate helps her escape annihilation; in contrast Chris, an adventurous but unprepared survivalist, …show more content…
Loomis, in contrast to Christopher who succumbs due to the harsh forest. After Loomis is mostly recovered, Ann starts to realize his possessive and demanding qualities. She knows that she has to get away from him, so she leaves the house and lives in a cave in the valley. Loomis uses Faro, Ann’s dead brother’s dog, to trace her, but she is constantly on the move, which causes him to have trouble seeking her. When Loomis finds her, she crosses a stream of irradiated water. Faro chases after her, and falls in the water, killing him. Loomis chases Ann and threatens to kill her, but she brings up Edward, the man who Mr. Loomis murdered before the apocalypse, which distracts him, so she can then reason with him. After negotiating with him, she successfully gets away with Loomis’s radiation proof equipment that she had previously taken. On the other hand, McCandless is not as successful as Ann when he lives in the Alaskan wilderness. Living in the Alaskan wilderness, Christopher can eat only the small amount of game that he hunts, and his main source of food, wild potatoes. As winter sets in, potatoes are no longer fit to grow, and he is still not hunting enough to have a reliable food source. When he becomes stranded, he resorts to a large bag of potato seeds that he had stored previously. He starts eating a lot of the seeds, as they are his main food source. Because he has been storing those potato seeds in a sealed bag for so long, moisture …show more content…
For Ann this is favorable, but the same cannot be said for Christopher. The fact that Ann is considerate and productive heavily influences her fate. She is very sympathetic toward Loomis, which ultimately keeps him alive. Due to the fact that he recovers, his possessive nature makes Ann want to leave her well established home in the valley. Furthermore, her productiveness makes her escape from the valley more simple for her. Loomis is constantly tracking her using Faro, but she is always ready to pack up what she has and move to a new location, so she is not caught. She constantly keeps a safe distance from him, until the very end, where she escapes successfully. Similarly, Christopher’s traits largely affect his fate. His characteristics also play a heavy role in his outcome. Chris, being adventurous, decides to go on his dangerous journey, which ultimately results in his death. Also, his unpreparedness leads to his decease, because he failed to bring a topographical map, meaning that he did not know about a way to cross the river and leave the forest that he could not see himself, but is marked on a map. Because he does not exit the wilderness before the middle of summer, where his main source of food, potatoes, depletes, he resorts to eating potato seeds with mold growing on them, which causes his death. Ann and Christopher share some similarities, such as their resourcefulness, but their personalities are very