Into the Wild: survival and nature in Alaska

McCandless Journey Hero

McCandless' Journey to Discovery and Heroic-Sanctity

In Into the Wild, Chris McCandless embarks on several different movements -- wandering, questing, the pilgrimage, the going-forth. At times, he seems to have a goal, and at other times he appears to have none. Therefore, it is difficult to define Chris as a traditional hero of the monomyth. The major flaw in doing so is to miss the reality of Chris's "journey" -- which is that it ends tragically: he does not get to have the hero's return. Instead, he dies, a victim of his own imprudent, headlong rush into the wilderness. He does experience a revelation in the wild and a reversal, as he realizes that true happiness is not to be found in fleeing society but in being a part of it. Maintaining a sense of holiness in the world is the challenge -- being in the world but not of it. This is the realization, the "elixir" that Campbell speaks of. In one sense, there is a "return" with the "elixir" -- but that is thanks to the work of Chris's biographers. In the end, hero status may be given to Chris, but only if it is also given to everyone who appreciates, reflects, and assists in his "search" or "wandering" or whatever one chooses to call it. This paper will analyze McCandless's journey in relation to Vogel's terms and finally discuss its relation to Campbell's teachings regarding hero status.

Chris is a complex arrangement of archetypal journeyers. When the film opens, we sense that he is the tragic journeyer -- the one who left home and died before he could return. He is the anti-prodigal son type in a double sense: he is the antithesis of prodigality, evincing a lifestyle of renunciation all throughout his journey; and he fails to return home to ask for his father's blessing. Yet, he does make a spiritual journey of a kind -- a pilgrimage that is partly planned and partly unplanned. He is a romantic, haphazard journeyer, who assumes a new identity in a symbolic act and learns a lesson about himself and about human nature only after fleeing the latter and being forced to confront the former. He is a journeyer in this last sense despite himself. Throughout the film, he believes he knows what he is doing and why he is right. It is not until his imminent doom that he truly begins to reflect on his own personal faults and failings, realizing the true beauty of the life he has sought and sought to flee. This realization ignites the souls of those who are touched by it. In this sense, he achieves heroic status in death: As Campbell states, he "sleeps only…[and] is among us under another form" (358). His person becomes the source of inspiration for others -- a source multiplied and magnified a thousand times over in part because he has died. "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop" (John 12:24).

He is Vogel's journeyer at times, for instance, when trying to get from point "a" to point "b," whether that point be in Mexico or Alaska. He is the "wandering" journeyer in the sense that he will gladly hitchhike or hop box cars or idle away the time experiencing the great outdoors with no other purpose than to experience them. He is on a "quest," as Vogel suggests, because he is out to find something -- even if he does not know what it is he truly seeks. "Give me truth," he says at one point, and at another, to Wayne Westerberg, he decries "society": "It doesn't make sense to me. Judgment. Control. All that, the whole spectrum…" He wants to flee "parents, hypocrites, politicians, pricks," he wants purity, which he believes he can find "in the wild" (Penn). Westerberg sees that Chris is indeed fighting a part of himself -- the part of himself that is unjust, prickish, and hypocritical, and he warns Chris against trying to juggle "blood and fire," that he is still a "young guy" and should not be so hard on everyone (Penn). But Chris is on a journey away from himself, his home, his world of comfort; he is also on a quest for "truth," which will lead him, ultimately, back to himself.

His is also a "pilgrim," in the sense that Alaska is like a sacred place for him, a place where purity is enshrined in the mountains, the sky, the wilderness. It is a place where he can commune with purity and pay homage to its Creator. He is also on an "odyssey," in the sense that his journey leads him from one incident to the next, like Odysseus' episodic adventure. At each stop, Chris learns a little yet continues to pull back from uncomfortable truths (like the fact that humans need one another, need love, need forgiveness, as much as they need truth). He is also "going-forth" in the sense that he is trying to make his way in the world "on his own," without the material necessities so important to his father, a man he cannot forgive. As Vogel suggests, Chris is more than a journeyer because he does intend to achieve "enlightenment" -- and he does, though it is not quite the enlightenment he expected to find.