Into the Wild & Transcendentalism

Into the Wild by John Krakauer follows the story of Chris McCandless, a young man whose actions have warranted fierce debate. Although many see him as a crazed, suicidal young man, Chris was a mentally and physically strong individual who was ill-prepared for the journey and did not adapt to the difficulty of survival.

Chris McCandless was many things. Reckless, sure. Smart? Yes. But one thing he was not was unfit for the situation. Chris had honed his body for the hardships of the wild and had survival ingrained into his muscles.  Even early in his journey to Mexico, he showed survival strength: “he had not seen or talked to another soul in thirty-six days. For that entire period, he subsisted on nothing but five pounds of rice and what he was not marine life he could pull from the sea”(page 36).  Living on nothing but what you can catch and 5 pounds of rice for a week is crazy; over a month is sheer lunacy. This experience showed the lengths and conditions he could survive in and how prior experiences had prepared him for the Alaska trip. Fast-forwarding to later in Bullhead, Krakauer describes how he was quite literally mentally and physically prepared, dictating, “he did calisthenics each morning to get in shape for the rigors of the bush and discussed backcountry survival strategies at length with Bob, a self-styled survivalist”(page 45). Training specifically for a journey into the wilderness shows clear commitment, and discussing strategies for backcountry survival makes it clear he was prepared for the journey.

Now, from a differing view, many argue that Chris was simply mentally unwell and was going to Alaska in an act of suicide. This claim is blatantly false and is a result of many people misreading Chris’s foolhardy and reckless behavior as intent to die. The main person people look to for this argument is Peter Christian, a park ranger operating out of Alaska. He argues that Chris journeying out into the wild is the same as him becoming a ranger, and that “In the end, I believe that the difference between us was that I wanted to live and Chris McCandless wanted to die”(Park ranger response: Peter Christian). This is a bogus claim that should be thrown out. To start, we can immediately poke holes in his argument by looking at his main claim of why Chris passed.“Consider where he died. An abandoned bus. How did it get there? On a trail. If the bus could get into the place where it died, why couldn’t McCandless get out of the place where he died?”(Park ranger response: Peter Christian)  To answer the question directly, later in the book, when inspecting the trail at the time Chris attempted to escape, Krakauer and Chris find that the Teklanika, a previously negligible and feeble river that flowed through the trail, “rumbled like a freight train”(page 170) and was “some 100 feet wide”(page 170). This destroys his argument and ties into our claim of his goal of survival, simply with the fact that he saw the river and turned back. A suicidal man would have attempted to cross, knowing it would most likely kill him. Chris valued his life and did not cross. To shatter this argument into pieces even further, the final nail in the coffin is him inhabiting the bus itself. Chris originally intended to build himself a shelter, but once he found the bus, he realized that it would be his best chance at survival and safety, and inhabited it, changing his moral code of living off the wilderness that he clung to so tightly, just to save his life, showing once and for all that he was not suicidal, and was simply young and reckless.

What Chris unfortunately ended up dying from was a false sense of preparation and lack of adaptation. Chris’s actions throughout the book leading up to Alaska built him the false vision of being a master survivalist, something proven sadly false. Starting in Mexico, while surviving on the ocean was an impressive feat and showed just how strong he was in certain survival situations, his journey would have ended far sooner in the swamp, with him journaling how  “Alex resumes quest for an opening to the sea, but only becomes more confused, traveling in circles.”(page 35) Chris would have continued circling in the swamp if he had not met the duck hunters, who agreed to “tow Alex back to his basecamp, and drive him and his canoe, to the ocean”(page 35). This is the weak link of the journey, demonstrating how Chris had to rely on outside help to survive, a luxury he would not get in Alaska. While actively prepping for Alaska, he was also shown underprepared, getting poor meat preparation info from hunters, not fact-checking those claims, and having an absurd lack of proper gear. To really bury poor Chris, his lack of proper timing is what truly killed him. Chris was presumably under the assumption that, aside from temperature change, the spring coming in Alaska would not have a drastic effect on his chances of survival, a foolish guess at something so important, and a drastic lapse in judgment for preparation. As much as the park ranger's response is flawed, he does bring up a good point when he states, “No experienced backcountry person would travel during April. It is a time of transition from winter’s frozen rivers and hard-packed snow with good traveling conditions into spring’s quagmire of mud and raging waters where even small creeks become impassable.”(Park ranger response: Peter Christian) The weather change that he brings up is partially what dooms Chris, with the Teklanika swelling to a massive size compared to when he first crossed it. His lack of adaptation to this change in his escape is what truly killed him, unfortunately. We know that Chris was in relatively good health at the time; it's not crazy to say he could have hiked along the side of the river for a few miles, where he would have most likely discovered either one: the cable car Krakauer and his team used to get across, or two: a shallow or skinny enough part he could have crossed over without getting washed away. Instead of adapting to the issue and hiking, however, he decides to return to the bus, an ultimately fatal decision.

Bringing the story to an end, Chris’s story is a sad one, of youthful ambition and recklessness that in any other situation would be a fun story for years to come, but unfortunately led to a life cut short. The park rangers' response reflects a large public sentiment about a suicidal young man, but with the evidence put together, Chris was a sane man with experience who got in over his head due to a false idea of preparedness and couldn't accept and adapt to the dire situation he found himself in, leading to the story we know today. A young man with a tragic end.