Tuesday, April 10, 2012

What supplies did Chris McCandless bring to Alaska in Into the Wild?

This was one point in the story where I was almost angry,
as McCandless brought almost nothing with him before he trudged off into the Alaskan
wilderness, even as winter approached.  I could never decide whether this was because he
was simply ignorant of the challenges he was going to face or the reality of an Alaskan
winter, or if he had some manic tendency that disconnected his thinking processes from
logic.


As he was hitching a ride to the frontier trailhead,
the man dropping him off knew full well the danger McCandless was embracing, and even
though he was a stranger, gave him a heavy jacket and a pair of Alaskan boots out of
fear for Chris' life.  McCandless then severs the last tie he'll have with humanity in
his short life by handing the man the last handful of coins, the last money of any kind,
that he still possessed, and marched off to his eventual death.

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