That 22 year old punk needs to get off his hypocritical high horse. You cannot proclaim under disdain for a system, brag about not needing it, and then continually use products of it.
If you’re going to talk about not needing a career, living in the dirt free to see all of God’s wonders, you cannot then sneak onto train cars or stay at Salvation Army hostels (he didn’t, but he checked in).
If you’re going to brag about making it on your own you cannot hitch hike or take gifts from people who pity you.
If you’re going to go into the wild as the final test in your adventure it strikes me as insincere to ‘rough it’ in someone elses hunting shack.
His achievements themselves are impressive, but without acknowledging the help he received, and instead giving ‘deep thought’ life lessons to anyone near him made him a jackass.
And fuck him for not at least letting his sister know he was alive, there was no call for that. What an egotistical selfish little prick.
He was entitled to a wonderfully flawless upbringing and he simply didn’t get it. Boo-fucking-hoo.
I haven’t seen the film, but I did read the book. It’s my understanding that the movie sort of sugar-coated his “adventures”, without the critical analysis found in the book. But yeah, there’s a good bit of hypocrisy about that kid’s attitudes.
I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, but I do have to admit that I left the theater thinking, “What a self-absorbed prig.”
But what 22-year-old isn’t that way?
I know he was inspired by “Call of the Wild” and all that, but I really didn’t fully understand his motivation. If he intended to rough it all on his own, then yeah, he failed at that. But I thought he was just looking to live life adventurously, without rules, which he most certainly able to accomplish. Perhaps he originally set out to tackle the world bare-handed, but learned that he wasn’t able to do it completely, that he needed a little help along the way. People can change their minds, can’t they?
It didn’t make sense that he would burn his money (why not give it away or leave it behind?) and then take a job, except for some romantic sense of “releasing” himself from his priviledged life. Maybe he felt that as long as he kept that money, he would live too safely and easy. I’m not sure I’d make that choice, but I can understand it.
I do think he was a sanctimonous, self-important, arrogant kid, but remember the movie wasn’t 100% accurate. IIRC, he did send a postcard to his sister.
I also didn’t particularly like the kid, but I found the story interesting (I read the book, didn’t see the movie). It is truely tragic with the protagonist undone by his own hubris, what’s not to like? Very old school Greek tragedy stuff there.
He tried to live life outside of the rules and found out the hard way why more people don’t do that.
Like John I read the book but have not seen the movie. The book does not really have the main character speaking. There are some letters and remembrances of conversations with people. I can see how in a movie you need the main character do some talking. But he certainly blew his family off in a way that is pretty hurtful to people who seem to have been decent and caring too him. So I basically agree with you.
Most 22-year-olds may be self-absorbed, but few are self-absorbed to the point where they think they are survival geniuses like McCandless apparently believed.
He may have been brilliant in other ways, but when it came to his plan to go to Alaska, he was an idiot. I’m glad no one else died because of him.
I read the book and saw him as a total Darwin Nominee. The movie doesn’t play where I live for a couple more weeks so I can’t see it til then, but there’s Oscar buzz for Hal Holbrook (one of my longtime favorite actors) so at least that good may come of McCandless’s so utterly avoidable death.
My biggest irk with him, not that he was bothering me personally obviously, was his inconsistency. He took a gun into the wilderness with him but wouldn’t so much as listen to advice of people who’d lived out there for decades because he wanted to do it on his own. If by “on your own” you mean no technology or material trappings, then why take a gun? And if you can take some items from civilization (clothes and guns and boots and what-not), why not a map? Just struck me as a total schnook.
Its been a while since I read the book (and I haven’t seen the movie). But I don’t remember him being all preachy about his beliefs. He didn’t want to be part of regular society, but he didn’t stop using parts of it. It didn’t seem that he was all that big of a ‘rebel’, just someone who wanted to wander more than most folks who wander.
He was, however, a fucking idiot when it came to survival. The most telling thing from the book was how he tried to smoke meat in Alaska using techniques from Montana or somesuch. The result was his meat getting covered in Alaska flies or something like that.
I read the book and saw the movie. He may have come across as self-absorbed, but I came away with a strong sense that he was suffering from some sort of mental illness, and that was responsible for his odd and reckless actions.
I haven’t seen the movie nor read the book, though I just read the original article about him (here). My vote is for idiotic, pretentious, arrogant asshole who deserved what he got in the end. Nothing about him was noble or innocent: he was an idiot. People who do stupid stuff like that piss me off, because they give a rather bad name to my age group.
The pittee came on my radar because he is probably a relative,via McCandless.( I’m one of those T D S W N K R genealogists.)
If there was any trait I could ascribe to that branch of the family,it would be that of rugged survivalist;all of my bunch left some degree of establishment/civilisation for unknown wilderness/“freedom”.
What Chris McC was really like,we’ll never know.I haven’t read the book nor seen the movie,but think Sean Penn is projecting a bit.
But it may be true that “self made” people aren’t fully cognizant of the web that supports them.
“Nothing about him noble or innocent” - you’re comfortable making this judgement based on a one page article? Wow - you feel he deserved what he got in the end. Based on a one page article. This saddens me.
He seems plenty innocent to me, and foolish. Not more foolish than a lot of young men his age I know and have known, though – young men blessed with a sense of vitality and immortality greater than reality allows them. ‘Of course I can do it,’ they say. ‘I’ve done more difficult things.’