Into The Wild Editoral

Chris McCandless: A Nut Job’s Journey to Alaska

By: Jason Drager

            Would you leave a good life with a promising future to go to Alaska on foot unprepared? Chris McCandless was a different guy. He couldn’t stand the modern civilization and he gave it all up on his journey to Alaska. He gave up a life of good grades, a caring family, and a promising future. “During his course of travels, Chris had acquired a machete and a .30-06 rifle…” (Krakauer, 119). Chris McCandless was an unprepared fool that didn’t know what he was getting himself into.

            I think that McCandless was a crazy guy. He walked on foot to Alaska and he acquired the majority of his materials on his way there, and yet he didn’t have a map for the area that he wanted to stay in when he was in Alaska. He was just an unprepared idiot that thought he knew everything, but he didn’t! “Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten pound bag of rice. Alex’s cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated. His rifle was only .22 caliber… He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass. The only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered state road map he’d scrounged at a gas station” (Gallien, 5).  If he would have been prepared for his journey, rather than acquiring his materials throughout it, maybe he wouldn’t have died.

            McCandless also didn’t take very well of himself while on his journey, such that he didn’t bathe, and even when he was working at a place on his journey, he wouldn’t bathe, but yet he would brush his teeth. Now this makes me wonder how the heck you could brush your teeth and not take a bath in the wild. Is it easier to brush your teeth in a river of waterfall than take a bath in them; that just doesn’t make sense: idiot. And when people told him that he smelled bad, he would take it too offensively and he would get mad. “When he first started working, he was homeless and he’d show up for work smelling bad. It wasn’t up to McDonald’s standards to come in smelling the way he did. So finally they delegated me to tell him that he needed to take a bath more often. Ever since I told him, there was a clash between us” (,41). He just didn’t like people giving him advice of what to do to make himself healthier. As a matter of fact he just didn’t like people telling him that he was wrong.

            One more thing that proves that McCandless was crazy was that he never wanted to have a good relationship with anyone and he had a hard time forgiving people such as his dad. Chris and his dad always got into big fights only because of what he did in the past and Chris couldn’t forgive him. Chris was mad at his dad because he had an affair with another woman while he was married. The only time Chris actually came out and opened up to his dad was when Chris got drunk. “He got real emotional. He was almost crying, fighting back the tears, telling Dad that even though they’d had their differences over the years, he was grateful for all the things Dad had done for him” (Carine,118). This is one of the only times that Chris ever came out to forgive his Dad for what he had done which shows how stubborn and stupid he was, which in the end killed him.

Some people say that he was a hero and the people that were criticizing him for his stupidity were actually the stupid ones because they were saying that he was stupid. Does that sound right? I do agree that he went on an epic adventure, but he went unprepared and he died because of it. What is even worse about his case of stupidity is that he was killed from a plant; not a bear, not the weather nor a wild boar, but a plant. The thing that is even worse is that he had a plant book with him with pictures of all of these different plants that said if the plants were edible or inedible right under the picture of the plant. How much more dumb can you get when you can’t look and pictures of read words like EDIBLE or INEDIBLE. The journey must of made him illiterate, I mean because he was a straight a student in college. “He had begun to eat large quantities of the wild potato seeds” (194) which than killed him. What was even worse was that if he had walked up a mile or so up the river, when it flooded over so that he couldn’t cross, there would have been a place to cross. You can see how stupid and ignorant Chris McCandless was.

As you can see how crazy this guy was. His foolishness and his unpreparedness utterly killed him in the wild. If he had prepared and brought all of his goods on the trip and to the goods that the people gave to him while he was on it, he probably would still be alive now. If I were you I would not feel bad for this guy because he was an unprepared fool that went into the wild. I would like it if you took my side for this fools trip into the wild. I also hope I taught you guys a few things about this guy.