Megan Howard

Response to Chris McCandless Parents
When I first began to read Into the Wild, I thought of Chris McCandless as a selfish, wreckless young man with complete disregard for the feelings of his family. I saw him on this important journey of critical self-discovery but one that I thought caused him to abandon his family. However, going to the parents' lecture Sunday night I realized that this was more than a journey of self-discovery for Chris but a defining act. His parents, who did not like this journey or want him to go on it, did respect it. It began to define his character as more than just a man on the path to find out who he was but as other people saw him. He touched many lives through his journey which, in my opinion, can act as a balance for the abandonment of his family. Chris McCandless was not on this journey completely alone because he was always interacting and changing the lives of the people around him. For although he no longer was with his family, he still impacted people and represented the person his family had brought him up to be. Some people say he abandoned civilization but I think that he was more on a quest for a deeper understanding of it by returning to his roots and a simpler place. And the more Chris McCandless or Alexander Supertramp searched, the more he provided a positive impact in the peoples' lives he crossed through. While I still feel that there were acts of selfishness on his quest, the entire journey did provide the people he encountered bettered and enlightened based on the pictures and stories his parents told.