In April of 1992, Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and died there. He was the child of an upper-middle-class family, who provided him with every opportunity in life, and yet, he felt a burning desire to renounce all his worldly possessions and trek off into the Alaskan wilderness. Prior to his renunciation of all his worldly possessions, McCandless had excelled both academically and physically; he ran cross-country, and had been accepted to Emory University to study as an undergraduate. In his investigative piece Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer describes McCandless as particularly energetic and strong-willed. Krakauer notes that McCandless never seemed to fit in anywhere, even though he had multiple people who cared very deeply for him in his life; he never seemed to really fit into any particular niche in society.
Before his Alaskan journey, McCandless had made other ill-advised trips in the continental United States. According to family, he had once made a trip through the Mojave Desert, almost dying of dehydration; when they expressed discomfort at his adventures, he began to express extreme anger with them (Krakauer 118). Chris McCandless drove across the continental United States from California to Atlanta to attend Emory as an undergraduate student, where by all accounts, he did extremely well academically. However, it was during this time that those around him began to notice that he was withdrawing from the “real world” socially and psychologically, and that no amount of prodding or pleading could bring him back to it.
The social isolation that led Chris McCandless into the wilds of Alaska was not an overnight phenomenon. Those close to Chris McCandless note that while he had always been strange, the self-imposed social isolation that he seemed to be living in was making his preoccupation with odd or extreme ideas worse. Jon Krakauer examines Chris McCandless’s newfound social isolation in the chapter called “Annadale:” “‘I saw Chris after his sophomore year at Emory,’ remembers Eric Hathaway, ‘and it was obvious that he had changed. He seemed very introverted, almost cold’” (Krakauer 120). According to Krakauer, Chris McCandless’s newfound social isolation was a function of a startling discovery for McCandless: his father had had an affair.
Krakauer is certain that this discovery is linked with McCandless’s decision to trek into the wilds of Alaska. The discovery unnerved and unsettled him at the very least; Krakauer conclusively demonstrates this through his interviews with friends and family during the days and months leading up to his departure.
But why did McCandless choose social isolation and repression of his emotions regarding this issue as a way to handle the psychological trauma he was experiencing. McCandless had a promising future, and plenty of money to put himself through law school, but instead of following that path, he walked off into the Alaskan wilderness.
Krakauer uses himself as a foil for McCandless when discussing the issues that made McCandless trek into the wild. “As a youth,” he writes, “I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless, moody I devoted most of my waking hours to fantasizing about, and then undertaking, ascents of remote mountains in Alaska and Canada-- obscure spires, steep and frightening, that nobody in the world beyond a handful of climbing geeks had ever heard of” (Krakauer 134). He likens his own experience in climbing mountains to McCandless’s drive to explore the Alaskan wilderness, but McCandless’s attitude is markedly different.
When he leaves the world behind, McCandless ensures that he has no way to come back. He burns his money and donates the majority of it to charity; he sells all his belongings and hitchhikes to Alaska. Every movement that McCandless makes is designed to ensure a complete and utter inability to return to his previous life. Krakauer, however, falls in love with climbing, but never expresses a desire to stay in the wilderness, away from human contact, permanently.
One of the commonly-held beliefs regarding Chris McCandless is that he was suicidal or otherwise mentally ill when he went into the Alaskan wilderness. His last letters to friends and family are melodramatic and full of references to possible fatality; he was, at the very least, intellectually aware of potential death in the Alaskan wild.
However, it is important to note that until his death, Chris McCandless had never failed at anything meaningful in his life; he was a wildly successful student and athlete, and was well-liked by his peers before he began to become socially withdrawn. It is entirely possible that McCandless never expected to fail in the Alaskan wilderness, merely because he had never failed before.
In a final postcard to a close friend, McCandless writes, “‘If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild’” (Krakauer 134). Chris McCandless seems less like a man on a philosophical search for meaning, and more like a man in psychological pain or turmoil, running from the issues that are causing him pain; that psychological pain, in his case, may have been coupled with a moderate to severe untreated mental illness (Medred).
Medred writes:
There were, after all, not one but two entities in that bus — McCandless, and a creature of his imagination known to the world as “Alexander Supertramp,” or Alex for short. Could it be that in a psychological war raging between McCandless and Supertramp, his alternative[sic] personality, the body found in the bus ended up being the physical remains of what the U.S. military might call ‘collateral damage’? (Medred)
While there is no real evidence that McCandless suffered from an organic mental illness, his behavior was certainly not that of a sane, well-adjusted member of society. He left his worldly belongings and left society; this type of behavior nearly precludes sanity as society traditionally defines it. In addition, McCandless’s writings themselves seem fragmented and disjointed-- though this is certainly not proof of mental illness, it is suggestive that something other than just a thirst for adventure was brewing inside McCandless’s mind.
There is a reason that there is a cultural trope regarding individuals who go off into the wilderness to live alone; people who live hermit-like existences away from all human contact are often victims of their own social isolation. Social isolation itself has been demonstrated to exacerbate certain mental conditions as well, forming a feedback loop of cognitive dissonance, mental illness, and social isolation.
Some say that Chris McCandless was merely a city boy who got caught up in the Alaskan wilderness due to poor planning and an idealized idea of what living in the wilderness is truly like. When his name comes up, it is common to hear people discuss how he lacked common sense, or that he should have thought through his trip before he went off into the wild. However, Krakauer builds a story around Chris McCandless that demonstrates that he was nearly incapable of truly thinking through what he was doing. He was impulsive and rash, and this automatically precludes him from good planning and good decision-making.
McCandless was also known for being tempestuous and easy-to-anger; Krakauer writes, “Not infrequently during their visits McCandless’s face would darken and he’d fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic idiocy of mainstream American life” (Krakauer 52). Although Krakauer does an excellent job of documenting Chris McCandless’s many moods, oddities, and outbursts, he fails to ever question whether or not the youth could have possibly been mentally ill when he decided to go into the Alaskan wild.
Perhaps Chris McCandless did not have a mental illness; perhaps, as many people believe, he was on a suicide mission to begin with. Indeed, his behavior may bear similarities to many who go on to commit suicide: renouncing worldly possessions, saying final goodbyes, and so on. However, there was never any indication that McCandless wanted to commit suicide. In all his letters, he talked vivaciously about his Alaskan odyssey; mentally ill or no, it seems that he truly believed his foray into adventure would be a transformative experience for him.
One of the most commonly-cited issues that people bring up when they discuss McCandless is his lack of preparedness for his trip. He did no real planning, expecting to live off the land with little or no experience in the wilderness. At best, his lack of planning demonstrates a supreme lack of common sense, but it could also demonstrate a severe mental illness that convinced him to engage in behavior that ultimately led to his demise.
No one will ever know the real reasons why Christopher McCandless renounced the world and everyone in it and went into the wild. His story, however, has served as a cautionary tale for many individuals who are thinking of trekking in the Alaskan wilderness. There are still many unanswered questions regarding McCandless and his Alaskan odyssey; the mystery remains to this very day.
References
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 1997. Print.
Medred, Craig. "The Chris McCandless Example, 20 Years Later." Alaska News, Politics, Outdoors, Science and Events. Alaska Dispatch, 20 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 Mar. 2013.
Medred, Craig. "Into The Wild: The False Being Within." 2007. Web. 1 Mar 2013.
Adjective Clauses:
“‘I hope that the next time I see you, you will be a new man with a vast array of new adventures and experiences behind you.’” (Krakauer 58) [Non-restrictive, modifies “I hope”]
“Ruess churned out many such letters, which bore the postmarks of the remote settlements through which he passed: Kayenta, Chinle, Lukachukai; Zion Canyon, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde; Escalante, Rainbow Bridge, Canyon de Chelly.” (Krakauer 91) [Non-restrictive, modifies “letters”]
