Ben Stewart - Chris Mccandless

I realized that i never posted my chris mcCandless blog

At first when I read Into the Wild I had many mixed emotions. On one hand I felt that what Chris McCandless ,or Supertramp, did was crazy. But as I continued to read the book I began to really relate to him. I could actually understand some of the reasons why he decided to leave everything and just journey out into nothingness with nothing. The one thing I couldn’t figure out however was how he was able to just leave his parents like that with out so much as a goodbye. I really just couldn’t understand that part. When I listened to the McCandless’s talk about their son on Sunday night it sort of helped me to understand the full situation. It didn’t really help me understand how he was able to leave his parents and everyone behind but it did help me to understand what his parents went through. I was very impressed with how his parents were able to present to everyone there son’s journey even though they may not have agreed with it.
I think that the main reason Chris decided to leave was that that was just sort of his personality. He hated sitting still and he always wanted new journeys. And this final journey was kind of like the ultimate accomplishment for him. The McCandless’s spoke a lot about how he was very good at what he did. The one point that they kept bringing up was how much he loved running. To me I think that can help to tell a lot about who he was. I feel like runners really have a love for nature that many of us can never realize. They said that his training routine would be to run as far as they could and then try to get back. To me that can be directly related to his final journey. He went as far as he possibly could, and then he attempted to get back. I feel that while it seemed that he failed in his final mission, he really did not. He accomplished everything that he wanted to accomplish and then his life ended, and while that is hard for the people that loved him, I think that he was ultimately ok with that. And in a way I would have to say that his journey was definitely spiritual. Maybe not spiritual in a traditional way but definitely spiritual inside him. I think that anything that involves following your heart can be considered spiritual. He did what felt right for him and in the end I don’t believe that he had any regrets with what he did. In a way I think all of us can be jealous of Chris because I think many of us go through our lives and in the end we feel like we didn’t do everything that we had wanted to do like he did.