Into the Wild / Chris McCandless

M

mozzy

Active member
I just finished reading the book (and also Into Thin Air a few months ago), for those of you who read it, what did you think?

Was the guy foolish, stupid, idealistic, stubborn, all of the above? Anyone on here tried something similar?

 
Was this book about the kid that went into the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter with just the clothes on his back and a knife?

I think the kid is completely foolish. Unless you have some sort of survival background then it shouldnt be attempted. Now if he would have tried this during summer other than winter, then he may have had a chance.

 
hahahahah, i literally just put the book down to stop writing an essay on it. i've read it a few times. i sort of admire mccandless' desire to say fuck it and go live in the woods, and sort of want to do it myself. but he seems like a bit of a gaper. i'd chalk up his belief that he could live in the alaskan wilderness with a rifle and some transcendentalist literature up to youthful hubris and the fact that he was a bit of a gaper.
 
I just started reading this book yesterday and I'm really loving it. I find his story really inspiring and shit, i think I would love to do something similar. But, this guy was clearly off his rocker a bit and needed to be way more rational about shit. Another guy you should read/watch his movie is Dick Proenekee. He lived in Alaska in a handmade cabin for almost 20 years I believe. He was not a naive idiot and survived. McCandless on the other hand, as inspiring and romantic he may be, was ultimately an idiot.
 
i feel like the media/pop culture have turned him into something of martyr for being foolish and ill-prepared. for people to idolize him is not necessarily wrong, but they should take from his experiences and understand the flaws.
there are plenty of other people with similar, less well-documented stories that should be looked into. i know of one guy who had lived in the canadian wilderness for nearly 30 years, richard proenneke (check his wikipedia, cool story).
 
Sounds like it was the mold on the potato root? that ultimately killed him. Like the situation in Into Thin Air, these seemingly minor small errors get compounded in 'extreme' situations.

He was in Alaska in the summer, actually, his timing was probably a couple weeks off. Had he been able to get across the river, he would have probably survived.

 
I admire the desire to go out there and say fuck the world as it is. He was def naive as most of us are. I still think it was a bad ass thing to try
 
watched the movie and honestly the kid pissed me off. like i get it you want to go leave everything and become one with nature but your going to die and its possible you dont know everything there is to know to survive. in the end it was sad but the kid was an idiot and had it coming
 
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