The Intriguing Story of Christopher McCandless on Into the Wild

Into the Wild
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Into the Wild
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction biography features a captivating but sad story of a young man named Christopher McCandless, a young college graduate from a well-up background who decides to leave and abandon the mainstream life of civilization and chance for American dream by leaving his family and friends and embarks on a self-searching journey in the wilderness of Alaska. Jon Krakauer attempts to explain the inexplicable decision of a rebellious young man to leave the comforts of his economically privileged life and venture into the wilderness to “live off the land for a few months” (Krakauer 1995:p. 14). Jon Krakauer attempts to investigate the life of Christopher McCandless who had adopted a vagabond lifestyle, unconventional for a college graduate, relinquishing all materialism and adopting a rebellious attitude where he “considered it his moral responsibility to flout the laws of the state” (Krakauer, 1996: p. 34). The intriguing story of Christopher McCandless offers an insight of adolescent/youth rebellion in an otherwise well-to-do family fueled by attempts of self-discovery, family feuds and general disgruntlement that made the young McCandless to make unruly and stupid decisions that led to a fatality.
Jon Krakauer starts off the story with Christopher deciding to hitchhike in the Alaskan wilderness. Chris had decided to venture into the wilderness in what Gallien, an electrician who offered him a ride, described as an “ill-considered Jack London fantasies” (Krakauer, 1996: p. 14). His decision to travel hundreds of miles away from his home to the wilderness was ill-informed, let alone stupid. Gallien, being an experienced hunter and woodsman, discovers that Chris was largely unprepared for his trip despite his unrelenting attitudes towards Gallien’s dissuasions. Gallien was confident that Chris could not survive long and would soon abandon his trip adding that “he’d probably get hungry pretty quick and walk out to the highway. That’s what any normal person would do” (Krakauer, 1996: p. 16). The dramatic decision reveals the disturbing nature of in the McCandless family. Few inquisitive attempts by Gallien prove futile, and Gallien is unable to convince Chris to reconsider his venture. The low level of self-disclosure can be attributed to the distance and non-affection relationship of Chris and his family. Rothblum and Snoek (1978) noted that “A high degree of parental affection is associated with high self - disclosure regardless of family types” (4). Chris had not spoken to his parents for two years, and his decision to escape civilization could have been fueled by this distanced relationship.
His education notwithstanding, Chris was engaging in a risky and careless endeavor in a field he knew so little about, living in the wild. In research to determine determinants of risky choices across the adolescents, Blankenstein, Crone, van den Bos, and van Duijvenvoorde, (2016) note that adolescents (aged between 10 and 25 years) are more tolerant to ambiguity. The research findings postulated that “, ambiguity-attitude, but not risk-attitude, was related to self-reported real-life reckless behavior, with less ambiguity-averse attitudes related to more reckless behavior” (Blankenstein, Crone, van den Bos, and van Duijvenvoorde, 2016: p. 11). Gallien had noted that the more they talked with Chris, the more congenial and well educated Chris seemed” (Krakauer, 1996). Conversely, his education had no impact on his decision making when he took more risky decisions deliberately and failed to inform his loved ones. Realizing of his father’s double-live that he maintained with his first wife, Marcia, may have clashed the reasoning Chris. The ultimate decision of Chris to abandon rational thinking made him take uncalculated risky decisions that later took his life.
Jon Krakauer portrays the family feuds and unending disagreements surrounding the family of McCandless. The perception of Chris towards his father changed and viewed him not with respect. After unearthing of the continued relationship of Marcia and his father despite his father’s second marriage, “Chris would fixate on his father’s own less than sterling behavior many y ears earlier and silently denounce him as a sanctimonious hypocrite” (Krakauer, 1996: 112). Being involved in a family with stepchildren may have taken a toll on Chris’ poor decision making. The effectiveness and affection in his family had slowly eroded away, choosing to stay away from his family. White (1999) notes that “the combination of less warmth but no more tension between stepparents and step- children supports the conclusion t...