Today I went and saw Sean Penn’s new movie INTO THE WILD based upon the book by Jon Krakauer of the same name. Krakauer based his book upon the life and “adventures” of Chris McCandless. McCandless was a college educated 23 year old raised in a middle class family just outside the Nation’s Capital. Shortly after graduating from Emory University in Georgia, McCandless donated his life savings to charity and began to wander across the country. He made every effort to escape from any link to his previous 23 years on Earth and all links to society. He would alternate from settled periods were he would work odd jobs to make money to periods where he live without money and very limited human contact of any kind. He managed, against most odds, to survive several dangerous events that for all intensive purposes should have taken his life, from a flash flood that claimed his car, to inexperienced kayaking down the Colorado River, and a sandstorm in Mexico that had him holed up in a cave for some 30 plus days. All of this leading up to his dream of making into the wilds of Alaska for his “Alaskan Odyssey,” his plan was to live for years off the land, far away from civilization, and would keep a journal of his physical and spiritual progress as he challenged nature in his attempts at survival.
To be fair, I did like the movie. The scenery was amazing and the idea of trekking throughout the countryside meeting all sorts of different people does have its own sort of appeal and mystic. Unfortunately the main character was not compelling in any way. He had a blatant disregard for those around him, even when you thought life and adventure had kicked him down to the point where he would reconnect with his sister, or take the advice of a friendly South Dakotan or old war vet, he doesn’t. Instead he continues to live with reckless abandon and carelessness that would ultimately lead to his downfall and demise. Throughout his adventures he believes that self-reliance, ego, and self-will will carry him through any circumstance. What I have found most compelling about McCandless’ situation is that there are many people who idealize this man for what he did, he is immortalized in Krakauer’s book, in Penn’s film, and there are even more still who use his life as a guidebook for their own. Yet I still ask, ‘Why is that?’
So this kid decides to donate his life savings ($24,000) to charity (starving kids in Africa) and then head off on adventure to escape society and the traditional roles it plays in peoples lives. Does this make him a hero? An idealist? Maybe. However, I don’t think so. He wanted out…out of his life, out of his family, and quite possibly out of this world. Was it really an “Alaskan Odyssey” or a suicide mission? After reading an essay by Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian I tend to believe it was the later.
What stuck me the most was what Christian had to say on the matter. Christian arrived in Alaska in 1992, the same year as McCandless, he also was about the same age. Christian served his first few years as a Park Ranger in Denali National Park, very near where McCandless’ body was discovered. The question I ask, just as Christian asks, “Why is McCandless’ story the one that gets immortalized?” Both young men had a seemingly similar dream to survive off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. To challenge themselves against nature, yet Christian survives and McCandless doesn’t.
What I found amazing was Christian’s take on the legacy that McCandless left behind and what really happened in that summer of 1992, the last of Chris McCandless life: “I am exposed continually to what I will call the 'McCandless Phenomenon.' People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent ... When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament ... Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.”
McCandless without regard to family, friends, or those around him went off on an adventure, an adventure he claimed was his dream to live a Thoreau-like period of solitary away from society and human contact. He would write of his adventures and maybe one day write a book, that I suppose he felt he could come back to the society he so desperately despised and would try to sell. Some feel this man was an idealist who went on this adventure for all the right reasons and that we should look up to him for this. Most people that know of this story, book, and this man will read this post with anger and frustration with my opinion of him, as they say I did not know or understand him, to which I say ‘very true.’
Yet, I cannot look at this situation in any other way then to say he was selfish and careless. He lived his life with disregard for others, others in his family, and those he met along his journey trying to heed him in his steps and redirect his destructive path. “How is that?” you ask.
Look at it this way. He graduates from college and immediately sets off on an adventure that no one in his family is aware of and leaves no way of finding him, even arranging for all his mail to be held at the post office for 30 days so that the return to sender mail isn’t sent back to his parents until he has had a sufficient head start. At no time does he contact in any way the sister he is reported to have had the best relationship with. Along the way many people offer to aide McCandless and encourage him not to go to Alaska. Even the very last man to see him alive offers to give McCandless a map of the Stampede Trail Wilderness Area, where his body would eventually be found some four months later, and McCandless refused this man’s map and efforts to take him to Anchorage instead to get proper supplies. Instead, of accepting the advice and assistance of all these people he insists on heading off unprepared into the wild.
It is said that it is nearly impossible for anyone to starve to death in this portion of Alaska in the summertime, yet that is exactly the fate that McCandless met. Krakauer believes the death by starvation McCandless suffered was caused by ingesting the seeds of the wild potato, which McCandless wrote about eating and blamed for his debilitating final illness. However, they are not commonly known to be poisonous, and the root of the plant is edible, there is evidence that the seeds contain an alkaloid which prevents glucose utilization. Yet, Dr. Thomas Clausen, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, carried out extensive tests on the seed and found there were no toxins or alkaloids. Note that this is the theory that Krakauer presents in his book on McCandless, and differs from the earlier theory he related in his article for Outside magazine, about a second plant — Hedysarum boreale mackenzii, a wild sweet pea plant — resembling the wild potato and known to be poisonous. Yet, in the most recent edition of his book, Krakauer has slightly modified his theory regarding the cause of McCandless' death. He believes the seeds of the wild potato had been moldy, and it is the mold that contributed to the seeds' toxicity, yet even this newest theory cannot be proven.
Apparently, there is evidence that McCandless was ready to leave Alaska. He felt that he had succeeded in his efforts to survive in Alaska after several months, not several years as he first intended. But once he decided to leave the way he knew was out had become blocked. For whatever reason he fails to discover any other possibilities for walking out of the wilderness, and had he had that map offered to him four months earlier he would have noted several possible exits and routes of escape. He was only six miles from a hand-operated tram that traversed the river blocking his path, and 20 miles by trail to the Alaskan Park’s Highway. I mean, how did he think the abandon bus he was living in had come to be abandoned there in the first place…it at one time had traveled that trail by first arriving on the Park’s Highway.
I think this story is a tragedy. Not a heroic adventure tale. And it is not a tragedy in the traditional sense. This character, Chris McCandless aka Alexendar Supertramp, was on a mission, a mission to lose it all, to lose himself. There is no heroism in that, there is noting admirable in that, it is just a sad story. And what makes this story tragic is what he found in the end: “Happiness is only real when it is shared.”
Here he was, starving in the wild of Alaska, without anyone or anything around him. He had all that he was searching for…to be free…away from everyone and everything. And what he finally realized is that being free of people, objects, money, and things was not the answer to happiness. What he failed to realize his entire life and during his journey was what all those along the way were trying to show him. That happiness comes from being with others, having that connection to human life and relationships. That happiness that was created in the second chapter of Genesis, by God himself: “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it…Then the Lord said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man. “At last!” the man exclaimed.” (Gen. 2:15-23 NLT)
McCandless lost everything in order to find true happiness and only then discovered that true happiness is only real when shared. Something he never did his whole life…true he gave away his money to charity, but was that sharing or was that his attempt to rid himself of things and society? Throughout his journey in life many people stepped forward in effort to share their life with Chris McCandless and he refused their efforts, his sister, Wes is South Dakota, Ron in Arizona, the travelers along the way. All because he sought a false truth and happiness and in the end realized where true happiness lied.
As I continue on my path in life may I continue to seek after God’s Will and His happiness. May I be mindful of those around me…past, present, and future who wish to share the experiences of life together. And may I never forget, that just as God intended, and McCandless found out all to late:
HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.
