Afterword and Additional 🙂

To understand the struggle over the legacy of Chris McCandless, a question needs to be asked first. Why? Why does anyone care about the death of a man who willingly succomed himself to the Alasken wilderness? Many struggled over McCandless’s legacy. Took the time and effort to create a conclusion to a story that never had one. Jon Kraukauer spent years learning, researching, and becoming accquainted with the life of Chris. Various science experts like Edward Treadwell and Thomas Clausen put energy into uncovering a mystery that had nothing to do with them. Why? My answer is; maybe it did matter to them. Maybe Christoper McCandless’s story should matter to everyone. Not because you or I desire to trek into the Alasken Wilderness, but because doesn’t everyone want to be free of the things that hold them back? Whether it be social media, or a job, or family obligations, everyone is bound to something. Chris wanted to change that. He broke the ties of society and sought to create his own path. I think this is why we care. Because a part of us wishes McCandless succeeded, to show us our ties aren’t chains but thread. This is Chris’s legacy in my eyes, but everyone has a different view. While the original story detailed starvation, new developments from Ronald Hamilton proposed a poisonous food he ate on the path. This is important because it could define the difference between bravery and stupidity. If McCandless died of starvation, he was uneducated and unready. A bad role model and an arrogant idealist. But if he thrived in Alaska, just mistook posionous seeds because they are obscure and unknown? He was prepared, he just made a mistake. A good role model and a respectable man. This shows the variation of beliefs when it comes to Chris’s legacy. Krakhauer even says himself in his afterword, “Confirmation that toxic seeds were at least partly responsible for McCandless’s death is unlikley to persuade many Alaskans to regard him in a sympathetic light.” While you or I may find the seed mistake understandable, native Alaskans could scoff at the switch. McCandless’s legacy is up to interpretation, but is affected by the battle of how he died. Whether he was unprepared, or a man who makes human mistakes affects the view some have on his story. To me, his legacy isn’t how he died but how he lived. 

My views on Chris’s legacy have definitley changed for the better. The evolution is clear through my forum posts. To begin, I don’t respect Chris at all. I say “I view McCandless as an idealist with the courage to pursue his dream, and as someone who was underprepared and overconfidant.” At this point my view on McCandless’s legacy would be similar to the unsympathetic Alaskans Krakhauer references. Little understanding of Chris’s actions and little respect for him running away. Calling him “underprepared and overconfident” was a pretty low blow, and my perspective on that definitely shifts. You can see this in my post from chapters 10-14, when I say “It helps the reader not see Chris as an oddity.” When I said this, I was discussing the inerstion in Krakhauers “Into the Wild.” I was decribing what was changing my mind about Chris. Krakhauers proximity to Chris grew on me, and eventually I felt close to Chris as well. I had grown to see his motivation, his vision. I was the reader that had stopped seeing Chris as an oddity. I was sympathetic with Chris. The more I learned about his story, the more his legacy was built in my head. By the time the 15-ep forum rolled around and I said “This shows readers Chris was human, flawed, as all of us are”, I was completely on Chris’s side. I related to him and understood him in a way I didn’t at the inception of his story. Even when I learned about the varying theories of his death, to me his legacy was made. I had watched Krakhauer attempt to put the peices of Chris’s story together, and the relationship I grew with Chris as a reader couldn’t be changed. Not by the potato seeds, or whether his death was purposeful or a mistake. To me, Chris’s legacy will always be about the way he lived his life. Choosing to forge his own path. Cutting his ties to society. This is Christopher McCandless’s legacy to me.