Chris McCandless departed from his life without informing the people who loved him most of what he was going to partake in. After deciding to spend two years traveling around the continent without a direction or proper supplies, McCandless burned his identity, abandoned his college degree, and gave away his trust fund without sharing his plans with anybody.
After beginning his journey, he met a man named Wayne Westerberg who believed that the reason why he abandoned his life was from issues within his family. Krakauer shares this when he writes “He never explained why he’d changed his name, from things he said, you could tell something wasn’t right between him and his family.” (p. 18) McCandless may have abandoned the morals ensued to him from his family purposefully, but his decision was selfish. McCandless left his family on a limb, wondering whether he was alive and safe everyday.
Westerberg’s belief that McCandless abandoning his family was caused by the conflict in his family was proven true when Carine, McCandless’s sister openly shared a conversation that the two had before his disappearance. During this conversation, McCandless complains about the lack of independence that his family had supplied him with and how he yearned to be free to make decisions about his life on his own. Jon Krakauer shares this in his book Into the Wild when he writes “For a few months after graduation I’m going to let them think that I’m ‘coming to see their side of things’. [...] And then, once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action, I’m going to completely knock them out of my life. [...] I’ll be through with them once and for all, forever.” McCandless had planned to abandon his parents, before his death, a plan that was executed for better or for worse.
Following his departure from Georgetown, the first time that his family had heard about McCandless’s whereabouts was from the police. This contact occurred after his car broke down in the Mojave desert. Although McCandless attempted to avoid contact with his parents, he realized that the circumstance was inevitable and did the best that he could to prevent government from knowing who’s car had broken down. Krakauer informs the reader that McCandless thought hard about his options regarding his broken down car when he writes “His parents would no doubt be contacted. But there was a way to avoid such aggravation: He could simply abandon the Datsun and resume his odyssey on foot. [...] We know all of this because McCandless documented the burning of his money and the events that followed in a journal-snapshot album.” (p.28) Yet again, McCandless made every possible attempt to hide his whereabouts from his family. He avoided anything that had to do with being a citizen in society and he most especially avoided anything that could ruin his plan to never speak to his parents again.
McCandless’s lack of interest in society translated to a lack of sexual interest as well. At the beginning of his journey, his surrounding fellows believed that his lack of sexual drive was due to his yearn for nature. This concept was proposed and believed to be true by philosophers and adventurers alike. Krakauer showed his associates belief when he writes “His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion. [...] McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact.” (p.66) It was originally thought that McCandless’s sexual innocence was due to his desire to be independent in the wilderness but was later refuted after he was truly away from society in Alaska.
During his time in Alaska, McCandless came to understand loneliness and the power of companionship. It was during this time that he came to learn that he was not capable of surviving on his own and that he would indeed need someone else to both mentally and physically survive. The first time that he yearned for somebody in Alaska occurred when he wrote a survival note. On this note he wrote “S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near, death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me.” (p. 12) McCandless came to realize that he wasn’t going to make it out of Alaska like he’d hoped, he needed to accept the help of others in order to survive. As he continued to slowly die in Alaska, he came to a new understanding of happiness and of the power of companionship. To this he said “Only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness… and this was most vexing of all, HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” (p. 189) After being alone and untraced, McCandless came to the sad realization that there is no purpose to being alone because it does not produce true happiness, which may as well just be the meaning of life.
Chris McCandless selfishly escaped from his reality to find passion and comfort in nature. He left his family worrying about his location and his safety to later discover that it wasn’t possible for him to exist and function without supportive people in his life. Although he attempted to escape to nature, he was never able to escape from society which included his family as a whole. Because of his circumstances without materialistic goods or any money to support himself, he relied on others for transportation, food, and for companionship. Through his attempts to leave society and his family, he was never able to exist without it. McCandless experienced the inability to exist without society in part to the human desire of companionship. He came to realize that we are not able to truly experience life without the presence of other people.
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