Key Quotes and Analysis

It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. (Chapter 4)

–Chris McCandless

Chris, throughout the text, remains true to his philosophy that material comfort will not help one attain true happiness or fulfillment. He feels that society and families have a way of curbing one’s freedom. This can be seen in his choice of literary heroes and the naturalistic traditions that Krakauer places him within. He appreciates and values his experiences with nature as much as with people. His thirst as a child to complete a steep trek remains with him even as he grows older. No, I want to hitch north.

Flying would be cheating. It would wreck the whole trip. (Chapter 7)

–Chris McCandless

Wayne, after having had Chris work at his space for months, offers to send Chris to Alaska by plane. Chris vehemently rejects the offer and. He mentions that not just the destination and staying in the wild is important but also the means of reaching there.

By calling taking a plane “cheating,” Chris establishes his adventure as a game that has rules. One such rule is that he cannot ever return back to material comforts and he should only possess things that are necessary for survival. It is a matter of irony, however, that in the end, had he been a little more prepared, with say a map of the area, he could have avoided his untimely death.

HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED. (Chapter 18)

–Chris McCandless

This is one of the last entries that Chris penned at the back of a poem. This shows the change that Chris has undergone from the time he undertook the journey. Initially, he believed that happiness and freedom can only be attained through a nomadic lifestyle that does not conform to society’s expectations. In these words, predictably written after spending some time alone in the wilderness, Chris understands that true happiness does not often come alone.

It is based on such instances that Krakauer posits that Chris was a curious, free soul and not an arrogant traveler, as believed by some. According to Krakauer, Chris was happy and content in his death.

EXTREMELY WEAK, FAULT OF POT. SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY. (Chapter 18)

–Chris McCandless

[Chris] was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs. (Chapter 7)

-Wayne Westerberg

The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. [McCandless] had spent the previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college. At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence. (Chapter 3)

–Jon Krakauer

Chris was very much of the school that you should own nothing except what you could carry on your back at a dead run. (Chapter 4)

–Billie McCandless

This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne…If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild. (Chapter 1)

–Chris McCandless

Some readers admired the boy [Chris] immensely for his courage and noble ideals; other fulminated that he was a reckless idiot, a wacko, a narcissist who perished out of arrogance and stupidity—and was undeserving of the considerable media attention he received. (Author’s Note)

–Jon Krakauer

In trying to understand McCandless, I inevitably came to reflect on…the grip wilderness has on the American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, [and] the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons. (Author’s Note)

–Jon Krakauer

As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow. (Chapter 13)

–Jon Krakauer

He was an extremely intense young man and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence. 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. When the boy headed off into the Alaska bush, he entertained no illusions that he was trekking into a land of milk and honey; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were precisely what he was seeking. And that is what he found, in abundance…For most of the sixteen-week ordeal, nevertheless, McCandless more than held his own. Indeed, were it not for one or two seemingly insignificant blunders, he would have walked out of the woods in August 1992 as anonymously as he had walked into them in April. (Author’s Note)

–Jon Krakauer