Into The Wild
In Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, Chris McCandless is portrayed as a reckless and foolish person who perishes out of arrogance, stupidity and self-centeredness. He knows what he would encounter out in the wild, but he doesn't prepare for it and it costs him his life.
Chris McCandless is an adventurous and reckless person. Chris loves the outdoors. After graduating from college, Chris buys himself a car and travels west in search of a new life. "...he intended to invent an utterly new life, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience." (pg. 22-23) During the time Chris is out west, he makes some reckless decisions such as when he is traveling alone in the desert and he almost dies of dehydration. Chris also almost dies when he paddles his canoe through gale force winds and whitecaps and he breaks his oar because he beats the canoe with it (luckily he has a spare). "He screams and beats canoe with oar. The oar breaks. Alex has one spare oar. He calms himself. If loses second oar is dead."(pg. 36) Chris could have been killed not only by capsizing, but also by breaking his oar. Chris' recklessness in Alaska is one of the contributing factors of his death. He knows what the conditions of his escapade are but he doesn't prepare for it. "Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snow pack. Alex's cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated. His rifle was only .22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, and no compass. The only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered state road map he'd scrounged at a gas station." (pg. 5)
Chris...
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