When Chris McCandless died four months after embarking on his Alaskan odyssey, critics accused him of being crazy and stupid, but as pointed out in Jon Krakauer;s Into the Wild and Henry Ticknor’s “Death of an Innocent”, McCandless was quite the intellectual. What led to his demise, however, was the fact that he so deeply rooted in academia that he lacked the practical knowledge necessary for surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. Inspired by Thoreau’s Walden and Jack London’s White Fang, Chris McCandless naively entered the wild to enrich himself philosophically and spiritually without realistically considering the dangers of removing himself from normal human society for an extended period of time.
Contrary to popular belief, McCandless was not insane or in any way mentally unstable, nor was he by any means dim-witted. Krakauer writes that “…he wasn’t a nutcase, he wasn’t a sociopath, he wasn’t an outcast. McCandless was something else – -although precisely what is hard to say” (Krakauer 85). Certainly not crazy, McCandless was first and foremost an intellectual and an idealist proud of his individuality, which is why Thoreau and Jack London’s writings had such a huge impact on shaping McCandless’ personal philosophy on life and ultimately inspired him to leave the societal confines of Northern Virginia. According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, intellectualism is characterized by “the development and use of the ability to think, reason, and understand” – -abilities McCandless possessed and fervently exercised throughout his tragically short life.
Ticknor writes that “In high school, [McCandless] excelled academically” (1), standing out from the rest of his peers with his exceptional grades and impressive extracurricular activities, as well as the admiration of his teachers and classmates. At Emory University, McCandless continued to thrive scholastically, majoring in history and anthropology with an impressive 3.72 grade-point average and again winning the respect of his professors and colleagues. As an intellectual, McCandless was an avid reader and was greatly exposed to the writings of such classic authors as Thoreau and Jack London.
These writers inspired him to reject the material society that surrounded him and seek a new life based on purity and truth, which could only be achieved by entering the wilderness and abandoning human contact. Influenced by Thoreau and London’s radical bohemian literature, McCandless attempted to recreate the lifestyle described in his favorite novels in order to dissect the spiritual and philosophical meaning of his own life.
As noble as McCandless’ endeavors may seem, they were entirely unrealistic. Sadly, as an idealist, McCandless failed to realize that the writings of Thoreau, Jack London, and similar authors portray highly romanticized lifestyles inapplicable in real life. McCandless’ romanticism and almost childlike naiveté characterized him as the typical idealist – -but his idealism did not make him a fool by any means. Encarta World English Dictionary defines an idealist as “somebody who rejects practical considerations in favor of the pursuit of perfection; somebody who aspires to or lives in accordance with high standards or principles”. In contrast, a fool – -an insult often thrown at McCandless following his death – -is defined as “a mentally deficient person; an idiot”.
As an idealist, McCandless began by shedding his bourgeois, suburban identity; he rejected his given name and adopted “Alexander Supertramp” as his new appellation, then headed into the wild with little more than the clothes on his back all because of some poignantly poetic passages he happened to read, such as the one below, from Jack London’s White Fang:
“Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominious, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – -a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild”.
(Krakauer 9)
London describes a heavenly forest drenched in silence and solitude – -the very characteristics that make it so beautiful. His glorification of desolation appeals to the reader as he writes of teeming with “the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life”, denouncing the hectic, high-pressure lifestyle McCandless played out in Annandale in order to meet his parents’ expectations. Eager to flee the stressful society he has known all his life, McCandless was fascinated with London’s dramatic depictions of the wilderness. McCandless was also fascinated with Thoreau’s Walden. Thoreau writes that “At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house” (1). Thoreau also wrote that “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence with Nature herself” (4).
Furthermore Thoreau wrote that “To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders – -I never heard what compensation he received for that – -and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone” (2).
The primary reason for McCandless’ demise was his inexperience with the Alaskan wilderness, which caused him to arrive under-equipped . Ticknor writes that “[McCandless] carried with him a ten-pound bag of rice, a twenty-two caliber rifle and his cheap hiking boots which were neither waterproof nor insulated. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snow shoes, no compass, and his only map was a torn road map he had taken from a service station” (1). McCandless ventured to Alaska under-equipped because he was not very familiar with the environment he was entering. Krauauer reports that Spacey said that “…there were gaps in his thinking. I remember once I went over to the house, walked into the kitchen, and noticed a god-awful stink. I mean, it smelled nasty in there. I opened the microwave, and the bottom of it was filled with rancid grease.
Alex had been using it to cook chicken and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere. It wasn’t that he was too lazy to clean it up – -Alex always kept things real neat and orderly – -it was just that he hadn’t noticed the grease” (63).
McCandless left Northern Virginia to escape the constraints of a materialistic society in order to fulfill himself spiritually and philosophically, in the hope that he would achieve the moral perfection described in Thoreau’s Walden and Jack London’s Wild Fang.
