In(dividualist)to the Wild

A couple of days ago I read the first book since I started law school that did not have to do with some aspect of the law. The book was Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, the story of Chris McCandless, a self-styled and controversial intrepid wanderer who walked into the Alaskan wilderness and, after 114 days, starved to death in an abandoned bus that sat by the Sushana River. The story of McCandless has come to prominence recently because of Sean Penn's movie based on the book. i have read many reactions to the McCandless story, and have found that many people express resentment toward him and his death. Indeed, Krakauer even chronicles some of the criticisms of McCandless that surfaced after the article that led to the book was published in Outside Magazine. The overriding theme of McCandless' critics seems to be that he was selfish, hubric, and under-prepared. People say that he ought not be made into a hero, that he should have thought more about his parents and others who cared for him, that he sets a bad example for people considering setting off into the wilderness to find themselves. I however, think these people have missed the nuance of the story. Chris McCandless was never meant to be heroic, his story was chronicled because it represents the convergence of tragedy, American mythology, and that aspect of humanity that makes us distinctly human and frail- that existence between extremes that is at the same time mundane and austere, yet, when it surfaces in people like McCandless, seems so very extraordinary.

I find myself comparing the story of McCandless to that of Aron Ralston, whom we all remember for being the guy who did what it took to survive, who challenged our self-perceptions and forced us to ask- could I do that? Ralston, of course, is the hiker whose arm was pinned by a boulder and who, after several days of suffering with little food and water, was forced to cut his own arm off to free himself. I bring up Ralston's story not in juxtaposition to McCandless', but rather peoples' reactions to the stories in juxtaposition. No one decried Ralston for being unprepared, or for possessing only that youthful hubris that would lead him into such a precarious position. Even though Ralston was hiking alone, had told no one where he was going or when to expect him back, and made the classic mistake of trusting his weight to a precariously perched boulder that had wedged itself into a canyon, a well-known canyoneering hazard. Yet Ralston has written a book about his travails, and now works as a public speaker, thus capitalizing on his brush with death. McCandless, on the other hand, made many of the same type of mistakes as Ralston, but perhaps his downfall is simply that he died, thus never allowing him the chance to make money from his story.

But the purpose of this post is not to point out the hypocrisy of McCandless' critics, but rather their ignorance as to what it really means to be American and human. When McCandless' body was found, there was a stack of books, many bearing notes and highlights from McCandless. One of the authors featured prominently in the collection was Henry David Thoreau, another American made famous for going "into the wild". The influence of Thoreau is perhaps one of the most vexing aspects of McCandless' story. When Thoreau wrote so vividly in celebration of the rugged individualism (not his term, but descriptive of the notion nonetheless), he was not describing what should have been, but what he saw all around him. That is the American ethos, the lifeblood of this country, and, at least during its formative years, what it meant to be an American. That, as Booker T. Washington so eloquently put it, a man can pull himself up by his own bootstraps. Self-reliance was how Emerson put it. Individualism is at the heart of American law, politics, philosophy, and life. Individualist notions permeate our Constitution the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers who gave us our own brand of democracy. And yet when someone who personifies that ethos so well dies in the process of adhering to the principle, people decry him as selfish and full of hubris.

True, McCandless is also exemplary of the dark and unattainable side of individualism. McCandless shows us that humans have socialized to the point that we can no longer survive the pinnacle of individualism. The state of nature is no longer hospitable to the civilized man. Perhaps this is the root of the criticisms of McCandless. It is not his own fault that worries people so much, but his exposure of the weakness in all of us. The book picks up on this theme in an aside about another individual who tried, and failed, to live off the land- Carl McCunn. McCunn's experiment with individualism was couched in terms of anthropological self-experimentation. McCunn wanted to see if a civilized man could survive using only the tools of the caveman. McCunn did well for a time, but eventually he died by his own hand, presumably after learning that his desired result was unacheivable.

Ultimately, though, the story of McCandless is one of a person who is distinctly human. He is at once both strong and frail, idealistic and pragmatic. McCandless is not the hero of stark proportions, who acts only according to virtuous principles and triumphs over evil. Nor are any of the rest of us. We lead a murky existence full of relativism, moments of weakness, and, should you view it the way that many seem to, the ultimate failure- death. This, is my theory as to why people react so differently to the stories of McCandless and Aron Ralston. Ralston lived, he cheated death, whereas McCandless committed the ultimate sin against life, he died, pitifully and alone. But the story of McCandless is much more real. We see McCandless in hospital beds, in churches, in ourselves. We see the repugnant reality that is death and, perhaps, just how maddeningly pointless a life-examined can seem when the story ends with death.