Into the Wild poses several questions to the reader who seeks to understand the novel and the actions that Christopher McCandless takes in it. There are several possible explanations for why he did what he did, some of which may be considered to be more important than others, and it is even possible to argue that he pursued the life style he did for a combination of reasons. I would argue that his motivation lay in a combination of different reasons. The most important of these was a belief in a basic American frontier ideology and the second was a dislike for capitalist society as he experienced it in college. This paper will show this by paying attention to specific parts of the novel.
The idea of an adventure to the frontier of civilisation is something that runs throughout American ideology and it is something that clearly appeals to McCandles. It is suggested in the novel that this desire for adventure may stem from McCandle’s childhood and the time that he spent in Carthage, South Dakota. Krakauer writes that this is a town that appeals to an adventurous spirit and that evidently does not exist in a normal historical time. He describes the town as ‘a sleepy little cluster of of clapboard houses, tidy yards, and weathered brick storefronts rising humbly from the immensity of the northern plains, set adrift in time’ (20). It is clear that this is a place that may have inspired McCandles with an adventurous spirit. It is both removed from many aspects of society and is close to the plains that may have inspired a sense of destiny and adventure in him.
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"Into The Wild Argument Essay".
This sense of being close to nature and even of being invincible because of this closeness is shown in a key passage in the novel when McCandles reveals that he believes that he can handle anything that the Alaskan wilderness throughs at him. At one key point, Krakauer writes that McCandles is engaged in a conversation in which he clearly believes that he is invincible and that he cannot be harmed by the environment in which he is placing himself. Gallien recalls how he attempted to change McCandle’s mind by pointing to all different kinds of things that could happen to him that he simply responded ‘calmly that no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn’t spoken to his family in nearly two years’ and that Alex was ‘absolutely positive’ that he wouldn’t run into anything that ‘he couldn’t handle on his own’ (6). This exchange clearly provides a belief in McCandle’s invincibility and in his inherent right to place himself in the American wilderness and to be able to conquer it based on his own ability and daring, and nothing else. While it is possible to claim that a major factor behind this feeling could simply be the arrogance of a young, it is also important to note that it is galvanised by the existing ideas of American entitlement, especially as they are apply to young, white men. It is likely that this is something that McCandles learnt as a result of his time in Carthage.
This feel for the wilderness is combined in the novel with several features that suggest that McCandles experiences capitalist society in a way that makes him think that it is fundamentally corrupt and that there is little or no hope of redeeming it. Krakauer notes this by drawing attention to the way in which he had chosen to live in his final year at college, something that would clearly demonstrated his refusal to engage with consumerism in a normal way. It is clear that McCandles find the that the life that he is supposed to lead as a middle-class person in America is a boring prospect and that therefore he seeks something else that is more exciting and true to himself. Krakauer writes that McCandles ‘had lived off campus in a monkish room furnished with little more than a thin mattress on the floor, milk crates and a table’ and that he ‘kept it orderly and spotless as a military barracks’ (25). Therefore before he has even made his decision to leave society, it can observed that McCandles had already rejected consumerism in a way that would anticipate his later decision.
In conclusion, the two main factors that can be seen to influence McCandles in his decision to leave society are frustration with capitalism combined with a connection to particular ideologies concerning the ability of American settlers to explore and to survive in the wild, that may have come about as a result of the time he spent in Carthage, South Dakota. When taken together, these two factors provided McCandles with both the motivation to pursue his course of action and with the confidence to believe that it would be successful.
- Krakauer, John. Into the Wild. London: Random House, 2007.
