In this thread I will narrate the life of Christopher McCandless from his birth until his death at the age of 24...

In this thread I will narrate the life of Christopher McCandless from his birth until his death at the age of 24. I intend to cover:

>his childhood
>his relationship with his family
>his influences and ideology
>his experiences travelling the United States
>his journey to Alaska and experience in the wilderness

If this thread interests you please bump to keep it alive.

Spoiler: He dies lol

On McCandless's academic ability as a child

>"In the third grade, after receiving a high score on a standardized achievement test, Chris was placed in an accelerated program for gifted students. “He wasn’t happy about it,” Billie remembers, “because it meant he had to do extra schoolwork. So he spent a week trying to get himself out of the program. This little boy attempted to convince the teacher, the principal—anybody who would listen—that the test results were in error, that he really didn’t belong there. We learned about it at the first PTA meeting. His teacher pulled us aside and told us that ‘Chris marches to a different drummer.’ She just shook her head.”"

__________

On McCandless's personality as a child

>"“Even when we were little,” says Carine, who was born three years after Chris, “he was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial— he always had friends, and everybody liked him—but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.”"

__________

On McCandless's pet dog

>"When Chris was twelve, Walt and Billie bought Carine a puppy, a Shetland sheepdog named Buckley, and Chris fell into the habit of taking the pet with him on his daily training runs. “Buckley was supposedly my dog,” says Carine, “but he and Chris became inseparable. Buck was fast, and he’d always beat Chris home when they went running. I remember Chris was so excited the first time he made it home before Buckley. He went tearing all over the house yelling ‘I beat Buck! I beat Buck!’”"

__________

Are you that user that has done this sort of thing for a bunch of historical figures? Goebbels and Hitler?

Bump

These threads are awesome and comfy, OP. Thank you.

OP here. Yes, I will post links to similar threads at the end of this thread if that's ok.

__________

On McCandless's relationship with his grandfather

>"Loren, not surprisingly, was charmed by Chris. And Chris adored his grandfather. The old man’s backwoods savvy, his affinity for the wilderness, left a deep impression on the boy. [...] When Chris was eight, Walt took him on his first overnight backpacking trip, a three-day hike in the Shenandoah to climb Old Rag. They made the summit, and Chris carried his own pack the whole way. Hiking up the mountain became a [...] tradition; they climbed Old Rag almost every year thereafter"

__________

On McCandless enjoying camping with his sister as a child

>"Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lived the better. [...] in our tent, Chris and I would curl up in our hunter-green and navy-blue sleeping bags, the soft linings covered with pictures of mallard ducks. On particularly cold nights we'd zip them together, and Chris would whisper, "Carine! Shh. Listen... I'm pretty sure there's an alien outside our tent." Depending on my mood, and on the level of noise in the forest, I would either panic or laugh."

__________


On McCandless's relationship with his sister

>"They’d been best friends from an early age, spending hours together building forts out of cushions and blankets in their Annandale living room. “He was always really nice to me,” Carine says, “and extremely protective. He’d hold my hand when we walked down the street. When he was in junior high and I was still in grade school, he got out earlier than me, but he’d hang out at his friend Brian Paskowitz’s house so we could walk home together.” "

_________

cool, I appreciate your threads

On McCandless's lifestyle during childhood

>"McCandles had been raised in the comfortable upper-middle class environs of Annandale, Virginia. His father, Walt, is an eminent aerospace engineer who designed advanced radar systems"

__________

On McCandless's parents' relationship

>"On teh days we did not pick up on signals of slamming doors and elevated voices fast enough, Chris and I were damned to bear the brunt of our parents' latest battle. Their dispute would begin with a barrage of insults, then escalate to Dad chasing Mom up the stairs and throwing her around until she eventually landed on the vintage walnut-stained bed set in the guest room, where it appeared he planned to choke her to death. [...] "I'm sorry, kids," Mom would shriek towards Dad as he walked away, "but when I got pregnant with Chris, I got stuck with your father!" I remember Chris crying desperately, in anguish over being born, apologizing for causing such trouble."

__________

On McCandless's father beating his children

>"Our parents' hatred of one another needed an additional outlet as their brawl dissipated. [...] We would [...] be instructed to choose the weapon of our punishment. [...] Hand in hand, we looked through his assortment of belts, trying to remember which ones hurt the least, which buckles lacked sharp edges. [...] I will never forget craning my beck in search of leniency, only to see the look of sadistic pleasure that lit up my father's eyes and his terrifying smile - like an addict in the climax of his high. Mom looked on, I imagined fearful to intervene yet also with a certain satisfaction [...] We were getting what we deserved. We had ruined her life with the weight of our existence, trapping her in this hell."

__________

he didnt have any long term plans when he went out into the wilderness. he took like 20lb of rice and hunted game and thats it from what i know. and also from what i know he died from snow pea sickness from eating a diet of mostly snow peas. rip lad.

On McCandless's view of running

>"McCandless viewed running as an intensely spiritual exercise, verging on religion. “Chris would use the spiritual aspect to try to motivate us,” recalls Eric Hathaway, another friend on the team. “He’d tell us to think about all the evil in the world, all the hatred, and imagine ourselves running against the forces of darkness, the evil wall that was trying to keep us from running our best. He believed doing well was all mental, a simple matter of harnessing whatever energy was available. As impressionable high school kids, we were blown away by that kind of talk.” "

__________

On McCandless's relationships with the homeless as a teenager

>"On weekends, when his high school pals were attending “keg-gers” and trying to sneak into Georgetown bars, McCandless would wander the seedier quarters of Washington, chatting with prostitutes and homeless people, buying them meals, earnestly suggesting ways they might improve their lives. “Chris didn’t understand how people could possibly be allowed to go hungry, especially in this country,” says Billie. “He would rave about that kind of thing for hours.” On one occasion Chris picked up a homeless man from the streets of B.C., brought him home to leafy, affluent Annandale, and secretly set the guy up in the Airstream trailer his parents parked beside the garage. Walt and Billie never knew they were hosting a vagrant."

__________

/bio/ ----->

>be spoiled brat
>read thoreau
>rly makes u think
>find out you're a bastard
>run off into the wildness and die because you don't know what the fuck you're doing

I'm listening

On McCandless's romantic interest in highschool

>"Chris was shy and reluctant to ask Julie out, but she could tell he liked her. [...] But their palpable crush just lingered until he finally made his move. Saying nothing at all, he simply took her hand into his one day as their group of friends sat talking on the bleachers. And they were officially an item. On their first date, they skipped over the typical movie-and-mini-golf ritual, and instead Chris took her on a long bike ride through the state park trails and into downtown D.C.. [...] Overlooking the Washington Monument and surrounded by fragrant cherry blossom trees in full bloom, he removed from his backpack a full-on picnic. [...] He bought her a cookie for dessert. He didn't try to kiss her that day, but later she told me she could tell he wanted to. They talked about transcendentalism, existentialism, the concept of nonlinear time, which he discussed incessantly."

__________

On Julie breaking up with McCandless

>"Shortly after prom, Chris's attachment to Julie was even stronger. He started talking seriously with her about the future, about all the things he wanted to share with her, including traveling to Alaska [...] He told her he loved her and missed her whenever they were apart. It turned out to be too much, too soon, and Julie broke things off. Sitting in Chris's yellow Datsun outside her parents' house, she told him that she wanted to date other people, that she just wasn't ready to be as serious as he was. He flew off the handle at her. [...] But as soon as his rant subsided, he pulled her close and held on in an intense hug. For as long as five minutes he kept her wrapped in his arms."

__________

fuck you man

But badpenny how do you document his last days?

OP here. McCandless wrote a journal while living in Alaska and elsewhere.

__________

On McCandless's parents planning to divorce

>"Chris and I were summoned for a sit-down with both parents to discuss important matters. "You each need to say who you want to live with. And we need to know that right now," they'd say. To answer correctly was impossible. The chosen parent would look smugly at the other in victory, while the odd one out would scream at Chris and me for being so cruel and unappreciative of all that they had sacrificed on our behalf."

__________

On McCandless feeling bad for attending college and leaving his sister behind

>""Hey, Carine!" our next-door neighbour Laura called out [...] "I drove your brother to school today. His car wouldn't start. [...] we're driving to school and talking about graduation, summer plans. I'm telling him how much I'm going to miss my boyfriend and about all this stuff we want to do before I leave for college [...] And he's still quiet and looking out the window. [...] Well, he finally looks back at me, and he's crying! And all he can say is that he feels guilty about leaving you behind...leaving you alone with them."

__________

On McCandless fighting with his father in his late teens

>"Chris was eager to hit the road with the Datsun immediately after graduation, and Dad was incensed that he didn't see the logic in having a predetermined travel plan to submit for our parents' approval. "Why can't you just understand that not having a plan is my plan?" Chris implored. [...] Chris turned his back to Dad and began to walk away. Dad's reaction to the defeat was so swift that I couldn't even bark out a warning as [...] [H]e lurched forward and slammed his fist into the center of Chris's spine, as if he were expecting to level Chris to the ground immediately."

__________

The guy is an idiot. It's fucking cold in Fairbanks. He would've had a better chance somewhere more south like Denali, Wasilla, or even join the bums in Anchorage. Thank god this idiot didn't get a chance to spread his genes.

Who is this guy?

some dumb fuck that starved and froze to death in Alaska for fun

On McCandless developing computer software

>"The summer after his freshman year of college, Chris returned to Annandale and worked for his parents’ company, developing computer software. “The program he wrote for us that summer was flawless,” says Walt. “We still use it today and have sold copies of the program to many clients. But when I asked Chris to show me how he wrote it, to explain why it worked the way it did, he refused. ‘All you need to know is that it works,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to know how or why.’"

__________

On McCandless's introversion during college

>"“I saw Chris at a party after his sophomore year at Emory,” remembers Eric Hathaway, “and it was obvious he had changed. He seemed very introverted, almost cold. When I said ‘Hey, good to see you, Chris,’ his reply was cynical: ‘Yeah, sure, that’s what everybody says/ It was hard to get him to open up. His studies were the only thing he was interested in talking about. Social life at Emory revolved around fraternities and sororities, something Chris wanted no part of. I think when everybody started going Greek, he kind of pulled back from his old friends and got more heavily into himself.” "

__________

On McCandless's lifestyle during college

>"During his senior year at Emory, Chris lived off campus in his bare, spartan room furnished with milk crates and a mattress on the floor. Few of his friends ever saw him outside of classes. A professor gave him a key for after-hours access to the library, where he spent much of his free time."

__________

Thanks user. Bump!

Okay

OP who else do you plan on doing?

Can I get a quick rundown?

Assuming you've read the book, how much does it differ from the film adaptation?

Worth a read?

OP here. I will post a list of individuals I plan to cover at the end of the thread if that's ok.

__________

On McCandless's room in college

>"After the commencement, the two of us took a sentimental drive in the [...] Datsun back to his place. It was a shock to walk into my big brother's apartment, so stark and bleak [...] In his college room, there was just one picture on the wall, a poster of Clint Eastwood [...] His unadorned mattress, absent of the typical comforter with matching pillows, was supported by concrete blocks and two-by-fours."

__________

On McCandless's perspective on inequality and political beliefs

>"In 1988, as Chris’s resentment of his parents hardened, his sense of outrage over injustice in the world at large grew. That summer, Billie remembers, “Chris started complaining about all the rich kids at Emory.” More and more of the classes he took addressed such pressing social issues as [...] world hunger and inequities in the distribution of wealth. But despite his aversion to money and conspicuous consumption, Chris’s political leanings could not be described as liberal. Indeed, he delighted in ridiculing the policies of the Democratic Party and was a vocal admirer of Ronald Reagan. At Emory he went so far as to co-found a College Republican Club. Chris’s seemingly anomalous political positions were perhaps best summed up by Thoreau’s declaration in “Civil Disobedience”: “I heartily accept the motto—’That government is best which governs least.’ “"

__________

Making pol posts great again thanks op.

Into the Wild was bretty gud. He should have eating Kstews asshole tho t b h f a m

Sounds like an asshole

>He should have eating Kstews asshole tho t b h f a m

implying he didn't irl

...

Ain't that the nigga that decided it would be fun to live in a decrepit old buss in the Alaskan wilderness and then died because he ate some inedible shit and the some moose hunters found his corpse like the next fucking day.

OP here. I've read Jon Krakauer's "Into The Wild" and also "The Wild Truth" by his sister Carine. The former influenced the film a lot, and I recommend reading it. Movies IMO tend to "package" complex issues for the sake of easy entertainment.

__________

On the intensity of McCandless's personality

>"It was clear to all who knew my big brother that there was nothing typical about him. His intensity was legendary. [...] People would tell me "Your brother is intense," but [...] the plain truth was that he didn't react softly to things. [...] "I don't take my frustrations out on people, so I get angry at things instead." He was harder on himself than anyone else. He intensified the air around him, and people picked up on that, even if they didn't understand it."

__________

On McCandless's Datsun car

>"a beloved 1982 Datsun B210, slightly dented but mechanically sound, with 128,000 miles on the odometer. [...] Chris had purchased the secondhand yellow Datsun when he was a senior in high school. In the years since, he'd been in the habit of taking it on extended solo trips when classes weren't in session"

_________

On McCandless's stubborn idealism

>"He was an extremely intense young man and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence."

__________

young and naive, not an idiot. It's just as cold in Denali as it is in Fairbanks.

If so I salute him. Slut needs her fartbox tongue punched.

Cool.

Thanks for these threads OP. Always an interesting read. Though I wonder why this one is getting so much hate from anons compared to the other threads... just because the guy messed up and died?

On the influence of Tolstoy

>"Long captivated by the writing of Leo Tolstoy, McCandless particularly admired how the great novelist had forsaken a life of wealth and privilege to wander among the destitute. In college McCandless began emulating Tolstoy's asceticism and moral rigor to a degree that first astonished, and then alarmed, those who were close to him. Wehn the boy headed off into the Alaska bush [...] adversity and Tolstoyan renunciation were precisely what he was seeking. And that is what he found, in abundance."

__________

On the influence of Jack London

>"McCandless had been infatuated with London since childhood. London’s fervent condemnation of capitalist society, his glorification of the primordial world, his championing of the great unwashed—all of it mirrored McCandless’s passions. [...] McCandless conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he’d died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print."

__________


On McCandless's farewell to his father

>"“Walt’s birthday was June 10, just a few days away, and at the party Chris gave his father a present: a very expensive Questar telescope. I remember sitting there when he gave Dad the telescope,” says Carine. “Chris had tossed back a few drinks that night and was pretty blitzed. He got real emotional. He was almost crying, fighting back the tears, telling Dad that even though they’d had their differences over the years, he was grateful for all the things Dad had done for him. Chris said how much he respected Dad for starting from nothing, working his way through college, busting his ass to support eight kids. It was a moving speech. Everybody there was all choked up. And then he left on his trip.”"

__________

This hit home.

I was placed in a pilot program for gifted students in 7th grade but I quit within 3 months because the only difference I noticed was that I had twice as much homework as my now-deceased twin sister.

I resented that intelligence = more work and I've wanted to kill myself since 7th grade.

33 now and a total loser

...

SLIDE THREAD , THE POWER OUTAGE AND THE F18 IN THE SEA OF CHINA ARE THE ONES YOU SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON

I'm not gonna read your stupid thread just tell me why do you admire this commie faggot?

On McCandless'sappearance

>"McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. There was something arresting about the youngster's eyes. Dark and emotive, they [...] conveyed a vulnerability that made Westerberg want to take the kid under his wing."

__________

On McCandless's work ethic in South Dakota

>""[Wayne Westerberg] gave McCandless employment at the grain elevator and rented him a cheap room in one of the two houses he owned. "I've given jobs to lots of hitchhikers over the years," says Westerberg. "Most of them weren't much good, didn't really want to work. It was a different story with Alex. He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was, he'd do it: hard physical labor [...] And he never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself."

__________

On McCandless's intelligence

>""You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent," Westerberg reflects [...] "He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. "

__________

Similar thing happened to me. Being called 'gifted' as a kid is the worst thing that can happen to you.

excellent thread thank you

Bumpin' and thank you for these threads.

you would never understand, you normie ;(

On McCandless's strategy to avoid being robbed

>"McCandless spent the next six weeks on the move across the Southwest, traveling as far east as Houston and as far west as the Pacific coast. To avoid being rolled by the unsavory characters who rule the streets and freeway overpasses where he slept, he learned to bury what money he had before entering a city, then recover it on the way out of town"

__________

On McCandless's time living in Bullhead City

>"Bullhead City is a community in the oxymoronic, late-twentieth-century idiom. Lacking a discernible center, the town exists as a haphazard sprawl of subdivisions and strip malls stretching for eight or nine miles along the banks of the Colorado [...] he was holding down a full-time job, flipping Quarter Pounders at a McDonald’s on the main drag, commuting to work on a bicycle. Outwardly, he was living a surprisingly conventional existence, even going so far as to open a savings account at a local bank"

__________

On McCandless's lifestyle in Bullhead city

>"McCandless had tried to disguise the fact that he was a drifter living out of a backpack: He told his fellow employees that he lived across the river in Laughlin. Whenever they offered him a ride home after work, he made excuses and politely declined. In fact, during his first several weeks in Bullhead, McCandless camped out in the desert at the edge of town; then he started squatting in a vacant mobile home."

__________

It's got a pretty good soundtrack if you like Eddie Vedder.

He died because he refused to respect the land. He thought he was smarter than all the native Alaskans that told him would would die and guess what the dumb faggot starved to death.
If he'd even brought a map with him he would have seen that there was a wire bridge crossing not even half a mile upstream on the river he was trying to cross to make it back to Fairbanks.

He was potty trained.

On McCandless' Masturbation

>"McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. There was something arresting about the youngster's eyes. Dark and emotive, they [...] conveyed a vulnerability that made Westerberg want to take the kid under his wing."

__________

On McCandless's work ethic in the Strip Club

>""[Wayne Westerberg] gave McCandless employment at the grain elevator and rented him a cheap room in one of the two houses he owned. "I've given jobs to lots of hitchhikers over the years," says Westerberg. "Most of them weren't much good, didn't really want to work. It was a different story with Alex. He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was, he'd do it: hard physical labor [...] And he never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself."

__________

On McCandless's Sexual Innuendos

>""You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent," Westerberg reflects [...] "He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. "

__________

this guy always gets a lot of hate everytime he is mentioned

If he lived today, he'd be one of those people bragging about travel on social media. He's a dumb bitch.

Why has OP not typed everything out before starting this thread?

KNOW YOUR SURROUNDINGS.

As other posters have said, this dipshit didn't even have a map.

While I was watching the movie I kept thinking

>He's living in a BUS. A big fucking BUS. A bus that DROVE there. It wasn't dropped by a helicopter. The bus DROVE there. So surely he must be able to simply hike out.

But I don't think he even thought about that.

Well, the wild can be a dangerous place if you're not careful. Yet, I guess it beats becoming a cog in the horrible machine that is modern working culture. Fucking Protestant work ethic...

God bless op, fantastic thread.

what the fuck for? he was a twat. he moved into a broken down bus in the middle of frozen nowhere. spoiler alert - he froze to death. big fucking suprise.
twat.

On one McDonald's colleague's memory of McCandless

>"his colleagues at the golden arches don’t recall much about Chris McCandless. “One thing I do remember is that he had a thing about socks,” says the assistant manager, a fleshy, garrulous man named George Dreeszen. “He always wore shoes without socks— just plain couldn’t stand to wear socks. But McDonald’s has a rule that employees have to wear appropriate footwear at all times. That means shoes and socks. Chris would comply with the rule, but as soon as his shift was over, bang!— the first thing he’d do is peel those socks off. I mean the very first thing. Kind of like a statement, to let us know we didn’t own him, I guess. But he was a nice kid and a good worker. Real dependable.” [...]

__________

On another McDonald's colleague's memory of McCandless

>"Lori Zarza, the second assistant manager, has a somewhat different impression of McCandless. “Frankly, I was surprised he ever got hired,” she says. “He could do the job—he cooked in the back—but he always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you’d get on him to hurry it up. Customers would be stacked ten-deep at the counter, and he wouldn’t understand why I was on his case. He just didn’t make the connection. It was like he was off in his own universe. “He was reliable, though, a body that showed up every day, so they didn’t dare fire him. They only paid four twenty-five an hour, and with all the casinos right across the river starting people at six twenty-five, well, it was hard to keep bodies behind the counter. “I don’t think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything. When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws"

__________

just link a pdf of the whole book dipshit

>run off into the wildness and die because you don't know what the fuck you're doing

People better than him at survival have died from accidents. You're just a retard looking for an excuse to criticize.

Civilization has made us too weak and pathetic to live in nature. Animals are better than us.

On McCandless's landlord's memory of his tenant

>"“Nice guy, yeah, a pretty nice guy,” Charlie reports. “Didn’t like to be around too many people, though. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes—know what I’m saying? Liked to read books by that Alaska guy, Jack London. Never said much. He’d get moody, wouldn’t like to be bothered. Seemed like a kid who was looking for something, looking for something, just didn’t know what it was. [...] Nice guy, seemed like one, anyway. Had a lot of complexes sometimes, though. Had ‘em bad. When he left, was around Christmas I think, he gave me fifty bucks and a pack of cigarettes for lettin’ him stay here. Thought that was mighty decent of him.” "

__________

On McCandless working on a ranch

>"At the end of July, he accepted a ride from a man who called himself Crazy Ernie and offered McCandless a job on a ranch in northern California; photographs of the place show an un-painted, tumbledown house surrounded by goats and chickens, bedsprings, broken televisions, shopping carts, old appliances, and mounds and mounds of garbage. After working there eleven days with six other vagabonds, it became clear to McCandless that Ernie had no intention of ever paying him, so he stole a red ten-speed bicycle from the clutter in the yard, pedaled into Chico, and ditched the bike in a mall parking lot."

__________

On McCandless paddling a canoe along the coast of Mexico

>"On December 14, weary of paddling, he hauled the canoe far up the beach climbed a sandstone bluff, and set up camp on the edge of a desolate plateau. He stayed there for ten days, until high winds forced him to seek refuge in a cave [...] where he remained for another ten days. He greeted the new year by observing the full moon as it rose over the Gran Desierto—the Great Desert: seventeen hundred square miles of shifting dunes, the largest expanse of pure sand desert in North America."

__________

oh shut the fuck up you twat. of course we can't. hurr hurrr we're no longer fucking cavemen oh boo hoo

What a fag, he had a wealthy family that wanted to give him a good life, and he couldn't help but be a shithead and wanted to adventure off and got himself killed.

He could have spent his youth touring Asia and becoming Batman, but instead he drives off into Alaska by himself because fuck you mom and dad

McCandless was killed during a battle with a Shapeshifter Druid. Don't go innawoods with only .22 kids.

On McCandless's relationship with a girl at a hobo camp

>"Among the residents of the Niland Slabs was a seventeen-year-old named Tracy, and she fell in love with McCandless during his week-long visit. “She was this sweet little thing,” says Burres, “the daughter of a couple of tramps who parked their rig four vehicles down from us. And poor Tracy developed a hopeless crush on [McCandless]. The whole time he was in Niland, she hung around making goo-goo eyes at him, bugging me to convince him to go on walks with her. Alex was nice to her, but she was too young for him. He couldn’t take her seriously. Probably left her brokenhearted for a whole week at least.”

__________


On McCandless's relationship with women

>"“I don’t recollect [McCandless] ever talking about any girlfriends,” says Westerberg. “Although a couple of times he mentioned wanting to get married and have a family some day. You could tell he didn’t take relationships lightly. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would go out and pick up girls just to get laid." [...] there is little evidence that he was sexually active as a teenager and even less to suggest that he slept with any woman after graduating from high school. [...] It seems that McCandless was drawn to women but remained largely or entirely celibate, as chaste as a monk.

__________

Dude I dont know if you are goong to read this but thank you, theae threads are comfy as fuck

one of us

Thanks OP.

/r9k/ meets /out/

comfy af, thanks op

Some douche went inawoods unprepared and died. It's not very interesting.

I live in Alaska and I've seen shit that make stupid shape shifters/ski walkers look like Disney characters. Pic related I came across.

Post more Carine q.t.3.1.4 pics. She is a dish!

Is her neck photoshopped?

Wtf r9k is always mourning and complaining about women this dude did what he wanted to do without any women giving him any orders, he could have easily fooled with that girl. He was Omega.

On McCandless's friendship with an elderly man

>"Franz [...] had spent most of his adult life in the army, stationed in Shanghai and Okinawa. On New Year’s Eve 1957, while he was overseas, his wife and only child were killed by a drunk driver in an automobile accident. Franz’s son had been due to graduate from medical school the following June. Franz started hitting the whiskey, hard. " [...] When Franz met McCandless, his long-dormant paternal impulses were kindled anew. He couldn’t get the young man out of his mind. [...] He was polite, friendly, well-groomed. “He seemed extremely intelligent,” Franz states [...] “I thought he was too nice a kid to be living by that hot springs with those nudists and drunks and dope smokers.” After attending church that Sunday, Franz decided to talk to [McCandless] “about how he was living. Somebody needed to convince him to get an education and a job and make something of his life.” "

__________

On McCandless's letter to his elderly friend

>"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditions to a life of security. conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future."

__________


On Franz's reaction to McCandless's death

>"“When [McCandless] left for Alaska,” Franz remembers, “I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let [McCandless] die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like [him]. "

__________

>When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws

god, what a bitch

>I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like
Slavs like to say say 'good men meet their creator early'

shills for the government

scared you will pick up and enjoy your life instead of work as a slave

you know how many people have done this and did not die, plenty

you never hear about them though, there is a reason for that. you can't make examples of them.

>I resented that intelligence = more work and I've wanted to kill myself since 7th grade

It didn't just stop in school, you finish your work at a job and someone notices you get to finish other peoples work with no compensation, you'll even become the "go to guy" and the company still will treat you like a piece of shit

And then people wonder why we have MGTOW, dropouts, neets, extended adolesence, slackers, stoners etc

Success and talent are actively punished why is society like this

>be some sheltered faggot
>dude fuck society
>go Into the Wild™ bringing a flint, a fucking .22 rifle, and a sack of beans and no survival skills
>die
Whoa......

Just go do whatever the fuck you want, YOU have control over your own life.

If I remember correctly they had found something in the van/bus where he died, to the effect that he had embraced Jesus Chris when he died.

Couldn't find anything about this on google, can you confirm/deny this?

On McCandless's meeting with his employer's mother

>"“There was something fascinating about him,” explains Mrs. Westerberg, seated at the polished walnut table where McCandless dined that night. “[McCandless] struck me as much older than twenty-four. Everything I said, he’d demand to know more about what I meant, about why I thought this way or that. He was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs. “We talked for hours about books; there aren’t that many people in Carthage who like to talk about books. He went on and on about Mark Twain. Gosh, he was fun to visit with; I didn’t want the night to end. I was greatly looking forward to seeing him again this fall. I can’t get him out of my mind. I keep picturing his face—he sat in the same chair you’re sitting in now. Considering that I only spent a few hours in [McCandless’s] company, it amazes me how much I’m bothered by his death.”

__________

On McCandless departing South Dakota again to head for Alaska

>"When McCandless hugged Borah good-bye, she says, “I noticed he was crying. That frightened me. He wasn’t planning on being gone all that long; I figured he wouldn’t have been crying unless he intended to take some big risks and knew he might not be coming back. That’s when I started having a bad feeling that we wouldn’t never see Alex again.”

__________

On McCandless's mother worrying about her son

>"As months passed without any word of Chris—and then years—the anguish mounted. [His mother] Billie never left the house without leaving a note for Chris posted on the door. “Whenever we were out driving and saw a hitchhiker,” she says, “if he looked anything like Chris, we’d turn around and circle back. It was a terrible time. Night was the worst, especially when it was cold and stormy. You’d wonder, ‘Where is he? Is he warm? Is he hurt? Is he lonely? Is he OK?’ “"

__________

*Jesus Christ

this

he also died a few miles away from a highway ... they obviously don't show that in the movie

OP is just some edgy millenial faggot who saw 'Into The Wild' for the firs time and is amazed cause he has no clue about KINO

KYS OP!!!!!!!!!!

On McCandless hitchhiking on his way to Alaska

>"“[He] was clean-shaven and had short hair, and I could tell by the language he used that he was a real sharp fella. He wasn’t what you’d call a typical hitchhiker. [...] after about half an hour I said, ‘I tell you what, Alex: Liard is a thousand miles from Fairbanks. I’ll take you five hundred miles, as far as Whitehorse; you’ll be able to get a ride the rest of the way from there.’” [...] A day and a half later, however [...] Stuckey had come to enjoy McCandless’s company so much that he changed his mind and agreed to drive the boy the entire distance. “Alex didn’t come out and say too much at first,” Stuckey reports. “But it’s a long, slow drive. We spent a total of three days together on those washboard roads, and by the end he kind of let his guard down. I tell you what: He was a dandy kid. Real courteous, and he didn’t cuss or use a lot of that there slang. You could tell he came from a nice family. Mostly he talked about his sister. He didn’t get along with his folks too good, I guess. Told me his dad was a genius, a NASA rocket scientist, but he’d been a bigamist at one time—and that kind of went against Alex’s grain. "

__________

On the books McCandless took to Alaska

>"The heaviest item in McCandless’s half-full backpack was his library: nine or ten paperbound books, most of which had been given to him by Jan Burres in Niland. Among these volumes were titles by Thoreau and Tolstoy and Gogol, but McCandless was no literary snob: He simply carried what he thought he might enjoy reading, including mass-market books by Michael Crichton, Robert Pirsig, and Louis L’Amour. Having neglected to pack writing paper, he began a laconic journal on some blank pages in the back of Tanaina Plantlore"

__________

lel, the "rich city/suburban kid who wants to live off-grid innawoods and promptly dies" meme has been a meme in Alaska for all of recorded history, locals had a major kek when this faggot showed up and the memes became reality. /k/ still chuckled over it to this day, I never lurked /out/ but I'm assuming they get even more lelz from it.

>Liked to read books by that Alaska guy
Should have read "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer.

On the area in Alaska where McCandless lived

>"Ironically, the wilderness surrounding the bus—the patch of overgrown country where McCandless was determined “to become lost in the wild”— scarcely qualifies as wilderness by Alaska standards. Less than thirty miles to the east is a major thoroughfare, the George Parks Highway. Just sixteen miles to the south, beyond an escarpment of the Outer Range, hundreds of tourists rumble daily into Denali Park over a road patrolled by the National Park Service. And unbeknownst to the Aesthetic Voyager, scattered within a six-mile radius of the bus are four cabins (although none happened to be occupied during the summer of 1992)."

__________


On McCandless's final days

>When he’d first crossed the river, sixty-seven days earlier in the freezing temperatures of April, it had been an icy but gentle knee-deep creek, and he’d simply strolled across it. On July 5, however, the Teklanika was at full flood, swollen with rain and snowmelt from glaciers high in the Alaska Range, running cold and fast. [...] If [he] had walked a mile or so upstream, he would have discovered that the river broadened into a maze of braided channels. If he’d scouted carefully, by trial and error he might have found a place where these braids were only chest-deep. As strong as the current was running, it would have certainly knocked him off his feet, but by dog-paddling and hopping along the bottom as he drifted downstream, he could conceivably have made it across before being carried into the gorge or succumbing to hypothermia."

__________

On 'Outsider' magazine readers' responses to McCandless's life

>"Some [...] admired the boy immensely for his courage and noble ideas; others fulminated that he was a reckless idiot, a wacko, a narcissist who perished out of arrogance and stupidity"

__________

MI6 please stop.

bumping for interest

>person known for doing something dumb as fuck as an adult came from abusive household

molymeme was right yet again

South Dakota native that actually lives in the town this lid stayed for a whiles. To sum it up, he too was a know it all that had no real knowledge of the world, came from a privileged life style and thought he could assimilate himself into that of living off the world on his own. He was plain stubborn and refused to see why he was wrong. And it cost him. End of story.

an accident is a bit different from going into the wilderness completely unprepared and then dying from eating poisonous berries for every meal

On one survival expert's opinion of McCandless

>" McCandless [...] went too far [...]. He tried to live entirely off the country—and he tried to do it without bothering to master beforehand the full repertoire of crucial skills. It probably misses the point, though, to castigate McCandless for being ill prepared. He was green, and he overestimated his resilience, but he was sufficiently skilled to last for sixteen weeks on little more than his wits and ten pounds of rice. And he was fully aware when he entered the bush that he had given himself a perilously slim margin for error. He knew precisely what was at stake. [...] It would be easy to stereotype Christopher McCandless as another boy who felt too much, a loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense. But the stereotype isn’t a good fit. McCandless wasn’t some feckless slacker, adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. To the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself—more, in the end, than he could deliver. "

__________

On discovering McCandless's body

>"When they got there, according to Thompson, they found "a guy and a girl from Anchorage standing fifty feet away, looking kinda spooked." Neither of them had been in the bus, but they'd been close enough to notice "a real bad smell inside". [...] A peek through a window revealed a Remington rifle, a plastic box of shells, eight or nine paperback novels, some torn jeans, cooking utensils, and an expensive backpack. In the very rear of the vehicle, on a jerry-built bunk, was a blue sleeping bag that appeared to have something or someone inside it"

__________

OP here. This is my final post, I hope the thread was interesting.
__________

On the non-edible plants that contributed to his death

>"McCandless [...] steered clear of the toxic H. mackenzii and never ate its seeds or any other part of the plant. He was indeed poisoned, but the plant that killed him wasn’t wild sweet pea. The agent of his demise was wild potato, H. alpinum, the species plainly identified as nontoxic in Tanaina Plantlore. The book advises only that the roots of the wild potato are edible. Although it says nothing about the seeds of the species being edible, it also says nothing about the seeds being toxic. To be fair to McCandless, it should be pointed out that the seeds of H. alpinum have never been described as toxic in any published text: An extensive search of the medical and botanical literature yielded not a single indication that any part of H. alpinum is poisonous."

__________

On McCandless's final note

>"McCandless penned a brief adios: “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!” Then he crawled into the sleeping bag his mother had sewn for him and slipped into unconsciousness. He probably died on August 18, 112 days after he’d walked into the wild [...] One of his last acts was to take a picture of himself, standing near the bus under the high Alaska sky, one hand holding his final note toward the camera lens, the other raised in a brave, beatific farewell."

__________

On McCandless's sister's reaction to her brother's final note

>"Chris had written, in the same block-letter format he always used when he felt something was of principal importance: HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED. Given my awareness and understanding of Chris's deep beliefs in self-reliance, his warning that I was the only one who could make myself truly happy, and the great comfort I knew he took in the purity of nature rather than from human relationships, these words from him surprised me."

__________