Analysis

This chapter offers context for, and thus perspective on, McCandless’s situation. By quoting from some of the many outraged responses to his article, Krakauer shares with the reader the typical reaction to McCandless’s story: smug superiority laced with disbelief that anyone could be so foolhardy.

And yet, as the examples of Rosselini, Waterman, and McCunn demonstrate, McCandless is hardly the only individual impelled to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. At the same time, these others provide Krakauer with an opportunity to highlight McCandless’s uniqueness; the author characterizes him by contrast with his predecessors. Similar to Rosselini and Waterman, Christopher McCandless “was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature,” the author writes. Like Waterman and McCunn, he lacked common sense. McCandless was unlike Waterman in that he was mentally stable. And in contrast to McCunn, McCandless didn’t expect to be saved.

“Although he was rash,” Krakauer summarizes, McCandless “wasn’t incompetent — he wouldn’t have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn’t a nutcase, he wasn’t a sociopath, he wasn’t an outcast. McCandless was something else. . . . A pilgrim perhaps.”