Mccandless: The Hero's Hero

However, my argument is that McCandless was a dreamer and an explorer; an admirable person with worthwhile ethics.
The experiences which shaped McCandless’s character began when he was a young boy. He grew up in a household where dysfunction was the norm. Therefore, his first stage in the Hero’s Journey, his “Ordinary World” was one of hurt and family dysfunction, as there were issues such as adultery surrounding McCandless’s childhood. McCandless’s upbringing is easily comparable to that of Holden Caulfield, in J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Both young men, McCandless and Caufield, have problems with common social interactions. However, Caulfield 's social issues are much more obvious than McCandless’s. For example, throughout the …show more content…
Along his adventure of a lifetime, he meets many people who help, hinder, and befriend him. The first of these mentors is his grandfather, whom McCandless was quite fascinated by. Chris McCandless had a very close relationship with his grandpa, Loren Johnson. Loren was “...proud and stubborn and dreamy, a woodsman, a self-taught musician, a writer of poetry.”(108) Chris looked up to his grandfather. “The old man’s backwood savvy, his affinity for the wilderness, left a deep impression on the boy.” (109) McCandless’s fondness of his Grandpa and what he stood for, the outdoors, independence, and craftiness, may have been a large factor which played into Chris’s shaping up into the person who he was. At this point in his life, McCandless was able to look to not only his parents, but to other adults in his life as mentors too. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, McCandless has achieved the bottom three, and most basic steps; biological and physiological needs, safety needs, and belongingness and love needs. Therefore, McCandless is at the fourth step, where he is looking to find higher self esteem. Loren was able to help McCandless’s self esteem, and McCandless allowed himself to choose just how much he would allow his grandfather to influence him. Other mentors who helped McCandless to find who he really was were some of the authors who he read. Krakauer compares McCandless to …show more content…
Throughout the years when McCandless deals with all of the issues that his family presents him, he is completely unhappy. However, when Chris is finally out on his home, he writes to the people he cares about to tell them how happy he finally is. “I’m a hobo now! That’s right, That’s right, I’m riding the rails now. What fun, I wish I had jumped trains earlier.” (53) This and other letters like it show just how happy McCandless was when he was finally able to live his life the way he wanted to. Here, we can again compare McCandless with Caulfield. McCandless ends up being so fed up with his parents, that he makes the decision to cut them off. “And then, once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I’m going to completely knock them out of my life. I’m going to divorce them as my parents once and for all and never speak to either of those idiots again as long as I live. I’ll be through with them once and for all, forever.” (64) This is part of the reward he gets, as he wanted nothing more than to riddance his parents. Here, McCandless is following one of Buddha’s beliefs: “I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.” McCandless was unhappy with the cards that life dealt him, so he decided to do something about it. This is an