Theory on Chris McCandless' Death - Ronald Hamilton 1
Into The Wild Essay
The Silent Fire
ODAP and the death of Christpher McCandless
I first became aware of the Chris McCandless story in 2002, when Jon
Krakauer’s book Into the Wild was being offered as an example of
contemporary narrative nonfiction in a literature course at the
university where I worked at that time. The book had been placed on
Reserve in the Library, and I can remember happening upon it and
leafing through it pages idly for a moment, before suddenly thinking
to myself, with strange certainty, “I know why this guy died.” At
the time, I literally knew nothing more than that about the Chris
McCandless story.
A more comprehensive reading of the book and further investigation
into my initial sense of certainty about the cause of McCandless’
death seemed to demonstrate that neither my initial response, nor my
certainty as to the cause of his death were unfounded.
I respectfully submit the results of that investigation to this
forum.
Vapniarca
The reason I felt that I knew what had killed McCandless with such
certainty had to do with the fact that I was familiar with an
otherwise obscure story of a concentration camp that had been
located in the then German-Romanian occupied region of Transnistria,
in the Ukraine, during the Second World War. The camp, known
otherwise as “Vapniarca” (a place name) was notable because it was
the only camp during the entire wartime period in which the inmates
actually staged a food strike – and beyond this – where such a
strike was actually “successful.” The reasons underlying the strike
had to do with what was called “horse fodder,” or “pea fodder,” a
kind of plant that had been stored to feed to the horses belonging
to the Soviet Army’s animals. After the advancing Germans and their
Romanian allies had occupied the Ukraine, and when other food
sources began to grow scarce, these stores of the abandoned “pea
fodder” were in turn given to the Jewish inmates at the
concentration camp at Vapniarca by the region’s conquerors.
Ostensibly, this fodder then became a food source for the prisoners
to grind into flour and bake into bread. Essentially, this was both
a cruel experiment and a death sentence, and the Jewish victims in
time began to realize this.
Lathyrus Sativus
The Indian physician Charaka of Triputa was the first to recognize
it about 400 B.C., a plant that he called “Kalayakhanj.” At about
the same time the Greek physician Hippocrates mirrored Charaka’s
discovery when he observed, “all men and women of Aions who ate peas
continuously became impotent in the legs and that state persisted.”
Centuries later, the Bhave Pahesh, written in India in 1550, noted
that, “Triputa pulse caused men to become lame and crippled, and
irritated the nerves.” By 1671 the Duke of the German State of
Wurtemberg had issued an edict that use of the flour of the plant
lathyrus sativus was prohibited from use in making bread “because of
its paralyzing effect on the legs.” By the early 1800’s, the Spanish
painter Franciso de Goya had produced an aquatint entitled “Thanks
to the grasspea” which depicts starving poor people eating a
porridge made of grasspea fodder, one of whom is lying on the floor
before the group and who has been crippled by the plant. In France,
the consumption of lathyrus sativus was banned by 1829, and in
Algeria in 1881. The precise mechanism involved in the crippling
(especially among young males) by the legume was (and is) poorly
understood, and yet it had become recognized, as the years passed,
as an insidious and dangerous botanical killer. In fact, it was
lathyrus sativus that comprised the “horse fodder” which had been
given to the inmates at Vapniarca to bake into their bread
allotments. What, exactly, is lathyrus sativus? Essentially, it is a
member of an ancient food source family known as “pulse” crops which
have been consumed as food by human beings for thousands of years.
(“Pulse” is a derivative of a Latin word meaning “thick soup.” It is
thought that the cultivation of pulse crops dates back for over
10,000 years). Grasspea, or lathyrus sativus, is a high yielding,
drought resistant legume that occupies the same general family as
soybeans, peas, and similar kinds of plants that produce seeds that
are rich in proteins and oils and which have been an important
source of food for both humans and animals for many centuries. What
is unusual about the grasspea, however, is that, under certain
conditions, it can not only be nourishing, but also dangerously
toxic.
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 1
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 2
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 3
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 4
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 5
Ronald Hamilton Chris McCandless Page 6
