Stampede Trail

Twenty-four-year-old Christopher McCandless was a strong adventurer who disappeared after graduating college to go on a backpacking trip which ended up in the Alaskan wilderness. Chris McCandless became Alex Supertramp because he wanted to explore the unexplored and discover a life without responsibility, possessions, people, money, lies, and abusive relationships. He severely wanted to prove that one’s life does not require road maps and plans but that one could be perfectly happy as a free man…

In Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild”, Christopher McCandless, is not a hero. Throughout the movie there are times he can be more of an antagonist: influencing the people he meets to see their own lives through the same lenses he views his own. Furthermore, throughout the film Chris struggles with two evils. He faces the evil in society of Man vs. Man. The constant need for materialistic possessions, success, wealth, and prominence. The struggle against power, control, and laws which govern our…

Chris McCandless and Timothy Treadwell were two individuals who had chosen a path distinct from society for reasons that only they could understand. Treadwell was fed up of the life that he had been living and decided to become one with the bears.While McCandless had given up on society as a whole and wanted to step into the wilderness to find himself. With different purposes and mindsets, McCandless and Treadwell both decided to go into nature knowing that there might be a chance that they…

Imagine walking into the wild while abandoning everything ever known in life such as family, friends, place of residence, and even daily hobbies and pastimes in an attempt to dissociate from society just to experience freedom, or prove a cause that many find unnecessary and life threatening. Although it may seem like an adrenaline rush for some, there is a very slim chance for survival given the surroundings and circumstances. The author of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer, reveals Chris McCandless…

In a society heavily based on family values, Chris McCandless abandons the status quo and runs into the wilderness seeking solitude and self-discovery. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the protagonist Chris McCandless escapes a privileged young adult life to pursue a better understanding of his self-identity, which he believes he can find in the Alaskan wilderness. Although intending to chase his sense of adventure and escape materialistic ideologies, McCandless was egotistical in his…

Jon Krakauer's use of his own personal experiences, intertextual references, and McCandless journal entries to piece together McCandless motive for going into the wild and therefore, defending McCandless decisions. Jon Krakauer's purpose for writing Into the Wild was to explain exactly what happened to Chris McCandless and what led Chris to go into the wild. Jon Krakauer connects himself with the subject of identity throughout the novel by comparing his personal experiences with Chris McCandless…

I have chosen to write about Bill Bryson and his experience in Sweden. Bill Bryson is a backpacker from Iowa who is famous for documenting his culture shock experiences in a humorous way. This time, he writes about Sweden in one of his pieces called “Neither Here Nor There” and in it he includes how Sweden is a country that is hard to understand. It is my firm belief that Sweden is not a country that is as hard to understand like Bill Bryson makes it seem as long as you have an open mind. In…

After reading Into the Wild chapters 12 13 and 14, I had a lot of thoughts about the family background and why Chris would discard everything and get into the depths of the wilderness and start his own wild life without any hesitation. Chris’s inharmonious relationship with his parents, especially with his father, was one of the main causes that drove him away to the deserted, frigid Alaskan wild. Chris’s unquenchable anger towards his father was normal, however, unjustified. He would never be…

If one day, everybody disappeared from your life, and it was just you to survive, do you think you could? Well if not, how long do you think you could survive on your own? In the nail-biting novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, Brian finds himself on the ground in the Canadian Wilderness. After the plane crash, there was nobody around to help him. It was a miracle that he was saved after fifty-four gut-wrenching days. He struggled many times, but used the materials he had to somehow craft weapons and…

Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild and Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist intertwine worlds of fiction and nonfiction through the personal aspects of pursuing a journey of self-discovery. Krakauer, a journalist, reports the events leading up to the death of Christopher McCandless, who embarks on a foreign path to Alaskan territory. McCandless cuts ties with his material lifestyle and relies on his newfound wits to persevere and endure the ways of the wild. Coelho depicts his…