Not To Escape, But To Find Reality

Chris McCandless is the main character in the novel, Into the Wild. Chris faces many challenges throughout his odyssey against his environment, other characters and his self. Most often, Chris finds himself in his solitude yet is surrounded by the wilderness. During his adventure he reaches many obstacles regarding the environment in which he must overcome. Chris once found himself in a dingy little canoe paddling his way through the ocean near the shores of El Golfo de Santa Clara, when "wind and tidal rips conspired to carry him out to sea" (page 36). With all the difficulties Chris must endure in his atmosphere, at times his frustration also mounts within himself. For the duration of the novel Chris seems to be trying to fulfill a missing need. He struck many people as a "kid who was looking for something, looking for something, but didn't know what it was" (page 42). In effort to fill this void, Chris keeps a journal with him on his enterprise to which he refers to himself by a different name and in the form of third person, almost as if he was living out his wildest dreams of a hazardous journey and recording it every leg of the trip. Chris' desire to leave the world he knew behind stemmed from the expectations of a society to which he viewed as in denial. In his effort to avoid the completion of these expectations, Chris abandons everything he knows to seek a new path of freedom. I find that his desires match mine. When my closest friend and stepbrother passed away in 2009 and I found myself sitting in a classroom day after day in high school contemplating my life due to the recent events I have braved, my daily routine seemed rather trivial and I realized I had to escape. My family and I made a getaway to Samara Beach, Costa Rica. There we stayed at a friends home and lived as locals for nearly a month. Alike Chris, I found that an escape from my environment to create new surroundings was exactly what I needed to find reality again.