He wanted to be free from the mundane circumstances of his current life, so he cut off all ties with his family and friends to minimize association with mainstream civilization. McCandless is quoted saying, “ ‘I think I’m going to disappear for a while’ ”(Krakauer 21.) After saying this, he sent a brief letter to his parents which “was the last anyone in Chris’s family would ever hear from him” (Krakauer 22.) By doing this, McCandless began his streak of self-reliance. Throughout the course of his cross-country journey to Alaska he did receive some help from people, but McCandless attempted to minimize all relations with people in order to maintain his self-imposed social isolation. Krakauer writes, “he [McCandless] had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it” (Krakauer 55.) His Alaskan expedition can be characterized by McCandless experiencing a seemingly unnecessary exile from society and exhibiting a strong sense of self-reliance. He decided to take his life in his own hands and take charge of his future by becoming dependent only on himself.
In the novels 102 Minutes and Into the Wild, self sufficiency is portrayed through the adventures of Chris McCandless and the survivors of 9/11 in order to display the attempt of surviving in fatal and alarming conditions. In difficult dilemmas people’s reactions could help or further harm the involved parties on where to go or what actions to take. Responding to the same question with two contrasting ideas could show how the diverse responses could mislead someone in a unsettling