“The true harvest of my daily life is […] a little stardust caught,
a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”
(H. D. Thoreau)
In the summer of 1992, young Cristopher McCandless lost his life in an isolated place in Alaska, north of Mount McKinley, his body being found only months later by the moose hunters in the region. Right afterwards, Jon Krakauer published in Outside magazine an article on that tragic event, in which he tried to assess the fascination exerted upon the young Americans by the wild, uninhabited regions, on the one hand, and the reasons that might have made Cristopher embark on such an exploit, on the other hand. And on closer inspection, the entire situation would prove to be a lot more complicated than it initially seemed, so that, unable to forget the details that he had learnt during his documentation process, Jon Krakauer would link them to a series of events in his own biography, while also placing them within a wider context, encompassing in that wise the mind-set of the young generation of Americans – oftentimes adrift and in search of models in whom they might truly believe, societal conventions aside. The ensuing novel, Into the Wild, was published in 1996 and it instantly became a best-seller across the world, being awarded several prizes and being subsequently adapted for the big screen in 2007, in a movie directed by Sean Penn, with Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn and Kristen Stewart in the leading roles.
The unwonted event and the young man’s untimely death transcended, even in the articles published in the American press of the time, the level of mere trivia and indicated that, aside from the actual events preceding that particular outcome, there were far more complex causes. For, having left the East Coast right after his graduation from Emory University in the summer of 1990, McCandless arrived no more no less than in Alaska, after having severed all ties with his family for months on end and after having taken on a new identity, presenting himself to all those he met on the way as Alex and trying to embrace a lifestyle that was downright incongruous with the ways and means of modernity. Thus, he gave all his savings to charity, abandoned his car and did menial jobs through the length and breadth of America, meeting people whom his parents would have barely imagined him next to but in whom he encountered springs of generosity and kindness that he had seldom seen in polite society, then he would hitchhike and delve into the untrodden wilderness of Alaska: but he would do all these short of food, without proper equipment and definitely lacking the adequate knowledge that would help him survive. In spite of all these, the young man believes in himself, still more in the letter and the spirit of the books that he loves and which, more than much of the knowledge (which he deems rather useless) that he acquired in university, set his course and give him an impetus to choose a certain path in life. And these books are Tolstoy’s diaries, Emerson’s writings and the fiction work of Jack London – from White Fang to The Call of the Wild, all of which he carries upon himself, re-reads at all times and from which he quotes to all those whom he befriends during this unadulterated odyssey of his. Obviously, part of the significances of the present novel and, implicitly, of the extremely radical – we have to admit – choices that McCandless makes are related to the quest for one’s self and to asserting one’s true identity in a world defined by social conventions and by the hypocrisy that the young generation, whose embodiment Alex Chris is, can no longer tolerate. Moreover, they are undoubtedly related to the rite-of-passage nature and scope of the journey that the protagonist embarks on, as well as to the – oftentimes highly exerting – trials that he withstands and has to weather and which, for the most part (only paradoxically and by no means haphazardly in such a context) he inflicts upon himself by his own volition.
On the other hand, however, the young man’s attitude and the decisions that he makes must be associated with a vast tradition of the North American intellectuals, fascinated by the wild, pristine world untouched by the human habits and with the romantic propensity identifiable on multiple levels in the American cultural space. McCandless evinces from the very beginning a self-confidence that is utterly amazing for his age and a courage that not few readers and critics have called reckless. Moreover, the protagonist manifests not only an irrepressible desire but also a vital need for independence, for avowing an existence that is unleashed and fully attuned to the rhythms of nature: “The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything.” Many of these features are traceable in the writings of the representatives of American transcendentalism, particularly Thoreau and Emerson, the seminal figures that are enshrined in McCandless’s mind. In actual fact, Emerson’s famous essay titled “Self-Reliance” broadly outlined the symbolic path that McCandless would take, because in it the writer laid emphasis on the idea that people should seek absolute solitude in order to be able to ‘truly hear their thoughts’ (“the voices which we hear in solitude”), since society, as it was construed in the nineteenth century, would have played the mere role of demanding that the individual accept a series of conditionings and rules that were extraneous to the real human nature and to the authentic self. Certainly, what Emerson wrote was an essay, not a wilderness – and solitude – survival guide, but McCandless’s huge error is to be found precisely here: he takes everything that he reads in his beloved books at face value, (intentionally or unconsciously) losing sight of the fact that they are, by and large, works of fiction and paying no heed to the fact that, in a significant percentage, Tolstoy’s diaries were also based on imagination. Consequently, he will try to enact, at the level of an extremely harsh reality, the rules of literature, and his tragedy consists in the fact that the Alaska of his landing is a far cry from the magnificent setting of Jack London’s novels.
In a certain degree, it is surprising that the protagonist should act like this and miss out on details so critical for his own survival, all the more so as he is undeniably a man of subtle intelligence and authentic cultivation and he has the fortitude to tell the truth. Just that, once with his incapacity to forgive his father for his marital infidelity and for his instituting a domestic atmosphere ill-suited to his son’s aspirations, McCandless is unable to draw a clear-cut line between literary fiction and everyday life. On the other hand, however, his constant reliance upon an authority of a bookish nature also signifies his need to single out an authentic spiritual parent, distinct from the person of his father, so that he will have more in common and will be able to genuinely establish a spiritual bond with Emerson rather than with his own parents. It is undeniable that part of his reading audience have reprehended McCandless for his selfishness and for his ruthless behaviour towards his family members (including Carine, the sister whom he loves dearly), but an in-depth analysis of the motives of the young protagonist’s actions also reveals a violent castigation of the far from perfect American society, as well as of the reticence of most of McCandless’s acquaintances to speak out the truth and to remain true to their ideals. Consequently, as if to exorcize an entire society, he subjects himself to an extremely difficult test, berating himself – proof to which stand the diary entries found upon him – for his naiveté and for his full-hearted desire to live by his own rules, which had made him bluntly ignore not only the rules of a society the conventions of which he did not believe in but also those of his much-beloved nature, the excessively tough laws of which, alas, he had slight familiarity with. The moment of truth comes when the books that he carries upon himself only offer him solace, failing to provide the real help that he needs in order to survive in the wilderness. Equally enterprising and childish, hasty and insightful, ready to venture into the most hazardous exploits, many a time ignoring the disaster he walks with, McCandless remains an indelible character, prone to rekindle the figure of the lonesome roamer that more than once featured in the American fiction of the previous centuries. Hence his implicit protest against the (partly unwritten!) laws of the world that he lives in but from which he strives to evade precisely in order to profess the tangibility of an authentic way of life; which only renders comprehensible his error of misapprehending the space of Alaska for a merely rougher version of the world of California, for instance. But reality will prove ruthless and nature itself will sacrifice the one who has practically devoted himself to it. His end may therefore be perceived as a tragedy – from which point of view both the loss of such fragile a life and the many wasted opportunities that in all likelihood lay ahead of the protagonist may be deplored. But in the same degree his death is also an act of insubordination that testifies to the human beings’ capacity to rise against social conformism, a spiritual testament pertaining to the urgency of obliterating rules and conventions that have been overused to the point of numbness, in the desire for the authentic voice of humanity to eventually be heard even in the boundless American world – or, why not, mostly here.
Lev Tolstoy wrote that “there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth”. Chris McCandless discovered, at the end of his astounding adventure, greatness in his own goodness and the strength to believe in the truth of one’s own being, as well as in the beauty of wild nature. He tested his limits by putting himself through the toughest ordeal, he surpassed himself and, from this point of view, he won. Even if the victory came at the cost of his life.
Translated into English by Mirela Petraşcu
Jon Krakauer, „Into the Wild”/ „La capătul sălbăticiei”, translation into Romanian by Iulia Blaga, Bucharest, Humanitas Fiction, 2024
Citiți varianta în limba română în Literomania nr. 205
Sumar Literomania nr. 413 (2026)
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