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Christopher McCandless, a college graduate coming from a well to do family, drops everything in his life so he can embark on an adventure that he lacks the skill and knowledge to survive. Chris aka Alexander Supertramp makes questionable choices throughout his voyage to Alaska leaving the reader to decide whether Chris’ admirable choices outweigh his stupid ones. Although the road that Chris pursues is an admirable path, the way he carries out his choices is unintelligent and
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Due to his disrespect of nature not only does Chris have death defying encounters, but ends up dead at the hands of mother nature herself. After Chris’ death was written about in Outside magazine, readers wrote negatively about how stupid he was, many of whom were Alaskan natives. The most strident criticism came from Nick Jans, a man living in a small Inupiat village in northern Alaska, he wrote “His ignorance, which could have been cured by a USGS quadrant and a Boy Scout manual, is what killed him. And while I feel for his parents, I have no sympathy for him. Such willful ignorance.... amounts to disrespect for the land”(72). Just because what Chris did was an admirable act does not mean that the way one carries it out does not matter. The act in of itself is admirable, but foolishly taking on such a task just proves how ignorant he really …show more content…
Two perfect examples are how he handled the killing of the moose and his trekking through Alaska. For someone in dire straits to have the opportunity to kill a moose and let alone succeed, is not one that should go to waist. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened in Chris’ case. “He butchered the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes, boiled the organs into a stew, and then laboriously excavated a burrow in the face of the rocky stream bank directly below the bus, in which he tried to cure, by smoking, the immense slabs of purple flesh” (166). If Chris would’ve taken the correct precautions for curing his meat he would probably be alive today. A big mistake Chris made in his trek was that involving the Teklanika River. In winter this river is easily passed, however in summer it becomes almost impossible to do the same. If Chris would’ve studied this he would’ve known that when he entered in the winter he would not be able to simply leave come the summer. “To McCandless’s inexperienced eye, there was nothing to suggest that two months hence, as the glaciers and snowfields at the Teklanika’s headwaters thawed in the summer heat, its discharge would multiply nine or ten times in volume, transforming the river into a deep, violent torrent that bore no resemblance to the gentle brook he’d blithely waded across in April”(163). Both Chris’ general lack of knowledge and his ignorant viewpoint of
Due to his disrespect of nature not only does Chris have death defying encounters, but ends up dead at the hands of mother nature herself. After Chris’ death was written about in Outside magazine, readers wrote negatively about how stupid he was, many of whom were Alaskan natives. The most strident criticism came from Nick Jans, a man living in a small Inupiat village in northern Alaska, he wrote “His ignorance, which could have been cured by a USGS quadrant and a Boy Scout manual, is what killed him. And while I feel for his parents, I have no sympathy for him. Such willful ignorance.... amounts to disrespect for the land”(72). Just because what Chris did was an admirable act does not mean that the way one carries it out does not matter. The act in of itself is admirable, but foolishly taking on such a task just proves how ignorant he really …show more content…
Two perfect examples are how he handled the killing of the moose and his trekking through Alaska. For someone in dire straits to have the opportunity to kill a moose and let alone succeed, is not one that should go to waist. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened in Chris’ case. “He butchered the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes, boiled the organs into a stew, and then laboriously excavated a burrow in the face of the rocky stream bank directly below the bus, in which he tried to cure, by smoking, the immense slabs of purple flesh” (166). If Chris would’ve taken the correct precautions for curing his meat he would probably be alive today. A big mistake Chris made in his trek was that involving the Teklanika River. In winter this river is easily passed, however in summer it becomes almost impossible to do the same. If Chris would’ve studied this he would’ve known that when he entered in the winter he would not be able to simply leave come the summer. “To McCandless’s inexperienced eye, there was nothing to suggest that two months hence, as the glaciers and snowfields at the Teklanika’s headwaters thawed in the summer heat, its discharge would multiply nine or ten times in volume, transforming the river into a deep, violent torrent that bore no resemblance to the gentle brook he’d blithely waded across in April”(163). Both Chris’ general lack of knowledge and his ignorant viewpoint of