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Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer

Decent Essays

In the book “Into the Wild”, Jon Krakauer tells us the story about the life of a young man named Chris McCandless. Raised in a middle class family in Virginia, McCandless lived with his father, Walt; his mother, Billie; and his sister Carine. Chris was intelligent, athletic, extremely well rounded, and had a natural talent for anything he attempted. After graduating from Emory University with a bachelor’s degree, he tells his family that he plans to “disappear for a while”. What Chris does is he abandons his possessions, donates his entire life savings to charity, and hitch-hikes his way to Alaska to live alone in the wilderness. McCandless spent 112 days hunting animals and gathering plants for survival, however, on September 6th, 1992, his decaying body was discovered on an abandoned bus, starved to death. Although Chris made heedless decisions that subsequently drove him to his death, I admire him for his self-reliance, perseverance, and bravery.
The main reason I admire McCandless is the fact that he always had to do things his way, without the help from others. For a college graduation present, Chris’s parents offered to buy him a new car, which he refused. The act of refusing the kind gift was not to offend his parents, but to make a statement that he preferred to drive a car that he earned himself. At his high school graduation party, which Billie and Walt threw for him, Chris gave his father an expensive Questar telescope as an early birthday gift. Although he was

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