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Reasons to Go Into the Wild

 

            Raised in the 'well-to-do' upper class, Chris McCandless saw the real truth of the gilded class; he realized that material things are not all that matter; that he, himself, in nature mattered. McCandless went to the Alaskan frontier to escape society and its limitations on life. He began a new journey to kill the false being within, which was too greatly influenced by society; he went for a spiritual revolution. He went into the wild to be free-- ultimately. McCandless was not the reckless type, but he did not respond very well to authority. He felt contained in society and he felt free in the wild. He was a caged bird just waiting to fly freely in the sky. He was so caught up in everyone's expectations for him that when he came to the realization that he did not have to live the life others expected him to, he was free. "At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers" (23), Krakauer wrote. In Walden, or Life in the Woods McCandless highlighted the following: "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices." (117) Chris read books that related to his life, and that held the same beliefs as him, and judging from this excerpt, that obviously caught his attention because he highlighted it and kept the book with him.
             In a letter to Ron Franz, a good friend of McCandless, McCandless writes his opinion of how life should be lived. He wrote, "If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy." (57) While I read this letter written by Chris, I felt as though he was writing a letter to himself, telling himself what he needed to do with his own life, writing out his own thoughts in order to understand what it was that he needed to do.


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