Into the Wild

By Angeleah A.

    Live Deliberately. No fear. No compromise. These commands Chris McCandless took as gospel. He interpreted books by Thoreau and Jack London literally, and they summoned him to his slow death at age 24, alone in the wilderness of Alaska. "McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily—he demanded much of himself—more in the end than he could deliver." 

    To appease his parents, Chris graduated from Emory University, but the rest of his life would be on his own terms. He gave away the $20,000 in his trust fund to OXFAM, burnt his driver's license, and proceeded to walk the earth.

    He crisscrossed the Western United States visiting its deserts, mountains, and plains. While ultimately working his way toward his goal—the middle of Alaska, he used his explorer's imagination. "There are no more blank spots on the map, but Chris with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain incognita."

    Chris was lean, but his heart was swollen with moral absolutism, and he possessed a radical zeal for moral purity. Having no concept of moderation, he held people to exacting moral standards. Inside the structure where he died, he scrawled his Declaration of Independence; "TWO YEARS HE WALKED THE EARTH. UTLIMATE FREEDOM, AN EXTREMIST, AN AESTHTIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD. THOU SHALT NOT RETURN. AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE. THE CLIMATIC BATTLE TO KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION. NO LONGER TO BE POISOINED BY CIVILIZATION HE FLEES, AND WALKS ALONE UPON THE LAND TO BECOME LOST IN THE WILD."

    Chris followed his bliss into the wild, put his flesh on the line, and adopted a helter-skelter life of endless horizons. I currently choose the path of comfort, civilization, and family—but not conformity. Even as I admire his inspirational life and mourn his painful death--a type of sacrificial offering, I think he would have mourned my life and considered it a different type of slow death. I suspect he preferred his own fate.

    I first learned about this book when I watched the movie a year ago. Then in Journalism we read the short story that started it all, and I was intrigued to read the book. This book was absolutely beautiful and meaningful to me. Chris touched me in ways that made me feel actually overwhelmed by his death. This is one of the only books to make me cry, and I recommend it to ANYONE. It's a very popular book and is highly available almost anywhere.