Into The Wild - Simone
Into The Wild Essay
Into The Wild Themes
Identity: Into The Wild is all about identity. One of the mains
reasons that Chris leaves his family in Washington for Alaska is
because he feels the need to find out who he is. Chris has recently
found out that he and his sister are “bastard children” as their
parents were not married when they were born. He also finds out that
his father had another child with his ex-wife after he himself was
born. This, along, with the fact that his parent’s marriage has
always been a cold and abusive one, drives Chris over the edge. Not
only have his parents been deceiving him for years, but now as his
sister Carine tells us, Chris’s “entire childhood felt like
fiction.”
Chris had always loved reading. It was likely from the genres and
authors that he read (Tolstoy, Thoreau etc.) that he was influenced
by them. This led to his decision that the best thing to do after
making such a discovery, was to go on a journey by himself and
philosophise about life. He felt that there was truth out in the
wild that there wasn’t in his life at home.
Carine McCandless said that Chris was not out in the wild to find
himself, instead saying. “Chris knew exactly who he was. He was
searching for a place in this world that he fit into, where he could
be true to himself.”
This is also true. However, Chris did discover things about himself
that he didn’t realise before he set out. Most importantly, his
breakthrough realisation: “Happiness only real when shared.” This is
a far cry from him telling his elderly friend, Ron, just a few
months earlier ‘You’re wrong if you think that the joy of life comes
principally from the joy of human relationships.” Even if ‘finding
himself’ wasn’t what Chris had set out to do, he certainly learnt
things that changed the way he saw things.
When Christopher leaves home, he wants to leave who he is and start
over with a clean slate. He is so determined to do this properly
that he donates his savings to charity, abandons his car and even
changes his name, calling himself Alexander Supertramp. He carries
this name around with him for about two years, but in the few days
just before his death, he begins to call himself Christopher
McCandless once more, as if he has finally accepted who he is. This
idea of “calling each thing by it’s proper name” ironically could
have saved him if he had only practised this properly in regards to
the poisonous plant he ate which, he calls by the name of a similar,
(but unlike what he actually ate), edible plant.
He leaves behind a college education, a wealthy family and a
promising future for a life much simpler, as he says just “big
mountains, rivers, sky, game.” Chris despises materialism, as
demonstrated by his ungrateful and hostile reaction to his parents’
buying him a new car, despite him being happy with the one he
already has. When he is in Alaska, Chris is pleased to be living a
life that is very different from what he is used to, surviving on
just the bare necessities. It is incredibly refreshing for him to be
this barest form of himself without all the trimmings, to not care
about money, possessions or keeping up with the Joneses, but to
simply live in tune with nature, just as God intended humans to
live. Despite this, he does plan to leave Alaska eventually and
return to society, he just feels the need to be “there, in that
moment, in that special place and time” first.
In conclusion, Chris, like a lot of young people, is finding out who
he is and testing himself, although he takes it further than most.
Regards,
Simone
