The Mccandless Journey

In John Krakauer’s “Into the Wild,” Chris McCandless set out on an odyssey into the American wilderness, and eventually the Alaskan bush, in the 1990s. Throughout McCandless’s journey, he reflected on himself and on society through books. Much of this literature he read is centered towards the lifestyle that comes with living in the wild. In some of the books he read, McCandless highlighted passages he believed to be noteworthy. Most, if not all, of these passages reflected his life, specifically his adventure, in its many aspects. These excerpts include Leo Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness,” Henry David Thoreau’s “Life in the Woods,” and Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago.” The passages accurately define Chris McCandless’s character, philosophy, and journey through all 3 of the authors’ connections with McCandless’s thoughts and ideals.
One of the first excerpts McCandless …show more content…
This selection presumably most affected McCandless’s decision to journey into Alaska. “Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies. Now, you can’t advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can’t make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? To begin with, love of one’s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of modem man—without them he is unthinkable—the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.” This extract suggests that in order to make a discovery or have an epiphany about something, you must demonstrate a personality devoid of restrictions, and view life as a