Into The Wild

7 Pages 1662 Words

Relevancy of Life and Death

At the beginning of reading “Into the Wild”, the more I read the more I started to question whether Chris McCandless was wrong for doing what he did. Primarily the issue at hand to me with this entire story is whether Chris McCandless’s actions are relative or not? Ultimately Chris was a product of the stereotypical life many teenagers live today. McCandless grew up with good parents that cared for him and his future. Chris also had a younger sister to which he was close to. As they grew up, it was noticeable that Chris was academically sound. He goes through everything that is common today in society: the public school system and not to mention college only to portray an unfortunate early death.
Further into the book, the first thing I asked myself was, “How could this kid have gone through all the crap that is supposed to somehow secure a prosperous future, and then in the end, wind up dead from starvation?” At the time I felt his death was self educed. I mean surely it is reasonable to believe that if someone has the intelligence to go through all the prescribed nonsense in society and come out with a GPA of 3.73, that this individual will somehow achieve some form of success in their life. Chris McCandless got through everything and basically tossed it out the window because he had realized that it wasn’t for him. He was a product of the system Chris, in the end, rejected. First off, I did not really believe McCandless’s actions were relevant, merely because I was not fully aware of his purpose. The reason I was not sure is because all I knew at first was that his journey is what killed him. So in the beginning, I definitely assumed that no matter what I was going to read, in the end, I still would believe his journey wasn’t worth it. The reason I say this, is merely because you can’t deny the fact that if he wouldn’t have gone on this extremely ill prepared journey...