Characterization Notes on Chris McCandless

Direct and Indirect Characterization Notes on Christopher McCandless

(Alex Supertramp)

Chapter and page #	Description/quote from novel	What impression you get about Chris with this character trait or description?
Chapter 1, page 4	“Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be 24 years old and said he was from South Dakota.  He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and ‘live off the land for a few month.’”	Chris is not physically fit for walking into such a dangerous environment.  He seems a little crazy.
Chapter 1, pg. 5	“Still, Galien was concerned. Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack.”	Chris was obviously not prepared for his journey into Alaska and seemed to not even care. His materials were not adequate enough and with those supplies, he probably would not survive in Alaska alone.
Chapter 2, pg. 12	“S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke.”	Chris was not able to survive in Alaska on his own and it shows he was not prepared for this epic journey.
Chapter 2, pg. 14	“At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighed sixty-seven pounds.”	Chris was not skilled enough to find enough food to survive and this resulted in starvation.
Chapter 3, pg.16	“McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant.”	Chris had the body of a very hard worker and means he was physically fit to work jobs that required manual labor.
Chapter 3, pg. 18	“If McCandless felt estranged from his parents and siblings, he found a surrogate family in Westerberg and his employees, most of whom lived in Westerberg’s Carthage home.”	Chris had a lot of trust in Wayne and his employees and he could depend on them for anything. Chris found someone he could go to for help and support.
Chapter 3, pg. 20	“What Walt, Billie, and Carine didn’t know when they flew down to Atlanta to attend Chris’s commencement- what nobody knew- was that he would shortly donate all the money in his college fund to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger.”	This act would show that Chris is kind of strange and unusual because not many people would do that. This would show that Chris wanted to do something else in his life and start a newl ife for himself.
Chapter 4, pg. 29	“Instead of feeling distraught over this turn of events, moreover, McCandless was exhilarated: He saw the flash flood as an opportunity to shed unnecessary baggage.”	Chris is very smart and knows what to do in certain situations. He also finds the best in situations that are even life-threatening.
Chapter 4, pg. 32	“While he was in town, he noticed a secondhand aluminum canoe for sale and on an impulse decided to buy it and paddle it down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California, nearly four hundred miles to the south, across the border with Mexico.”	Chris was very adventurous and wanted to live his new life exploring the world. Chris was daring and just wanted to live his life to the fullest.
Chapter 5, pg. 40	“I don’t think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything.”	Chris was not very social and this shows that he was pretty shy. He wants to keep his life a secret so no one finds out who he really is.
Chapter 5, pg. 42	“But like I was saying, Alaska- yeah, he talked about going to Alaska. Maybe to find whatever it was he was looking for.”	Chris had a love for Alaska and enjoyed everything about it. At this point, he was definitely planning to go to Alaska and live there for a while.
Chapter 5, pgs. 45-46	“The Sunday before McCandless left Niland, he was watching an NFL playoff game on the television in Burres’s trailer when she noticed he was rooting especially hard for the Washington Redskins.”	From this event, you know that Chris is from Washington, D.C., since he is rooting for the Redskins. This is the only real background information he gives to Jan Burres.
Chapter 6, pg. 51	“Over the next few weeks McCandless and Franz spent a lot of time together.”	Chris has a positive relationship with Ron Franz and likes to socialize with him. Chris meets someone who he is fond of and really understands him.
Chapter 6, pg. 55	“McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well- relieved that he had again evaded the impending threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it.”	Chris has a passion for Alaska and has always wanted to go there since he started traveling. Chris did not like to be around people for long periods of time and he just liked to be by himself.
Chapter 7, pg. 63	“He was a big eater. Never left any food on his plate. Never.”	During his journey, Chris is always trying to survive on anything he can eat. He adapted a lifestyle of never wasting food and if he wanted to survive in Alaska alone, there was absolutely no wasting food.
Chapter 7, pg. 64	“He brooded at length over what he perceived to be his father’s moral shortcomings, the hypocrisy of his parents’ lifestyle, the tyranny of their conditional love. Eventually, Chris rebelled- and when he finally did, it was with characteristic immoderation.”	Chris was getting angry at his father during his teenage life and was tired of experiencing the bad relationship between his parents. This was one of the reasons why he left home to go to the West and begin his journey without telling his parents. He just did not care about his parents anymore.
Chapter 8, pg. 72	“The prevailing Alaska wisdom held that McCandless was simply one more dreamy half-cocked greenhorn who went into the country expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found only mosquitos and a lonely death.”	Chris was a very strange guy who thought going into the wild would help him get away from his problems. He lacked common sense since he was not prepared for Alaska and that ended up costing him his own life.
Chapter 8, pg. 85	“Like Rosellini and Waterman, McCandless was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature.”	Chris was the kind of person who wanted to explore the United States and wanted to find nature at its finest in the West. Chris was a daring person who wanted to experience how harsh nature was, especially in Alaska.
Chapter 9, pg. 93	“And like McCandless, upon embarking on his terminal odyssey, Reuss adopted a new name, or rather, a series of new names.”	Chris was very smart in the way that he created a new name for himself. He created Alex Supertramp, and this shows that Chris wanted to be alone so no one, especially his parents, could bother him again.
Chapter 9, pg. 96	“Kind of different. But him and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That’s what was great about them. They tried. Not many do.”	Chris was one of the few people who would actually try living in the wild for such a long time. This made Chris very strange in the way that he does thing that people would never do.
Chapter 10, pg. 100	“He’s talking about some kid who starved to death up in Alaska. The police don’t know who he is. Sounds a whole lot like Alex.”	This suggests that Chris obviously was not prepared for the harsh conditions in Alaska and ended up dying there. Chris was not smart to be so unprepared for his stay in Alaska and should have known better.
Chapter 10, pg. 101	“It didn’t occur to me that the hiker might be Chris. Never crossed my mind.”	Chris never told anyone he knew what he was going to do after college so no one thought he died in Alaska.
Chapter 11, pg. 107	“He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.”	Chris did not mind being by himself and actually could entertain himself without anyone around him. This characteristic helped Chris on his journey because he had to be by himself for long periods of time but he handled it well.
Chapter 11, pg. 109	“And Chris adored his grandfather. The old man’s backwoods savvy, his affinity for the wilderness, left a deep impression on the boy.”	Chris had a very strong relationship with his grandfather because he shared a passion for the outdoors with Chris. This is probably why Chris developed a love for nature.
Chapter 12, pg. 119	“To Walt’s dismay Chris bristled at this small dollop of fatherly advice. The only effect it seemed to have was to make him even less inclined to share his plans.”	Chris did not like to listen to what his parents had to say. He pretty much ignored them because he wanted to do things his way without his parents interrupting him.
Chapter 12, pg. 123	“Indeed, he delighted in ridiculing the policies of the Democratic Party and was a vocal admirer of Ronald Reagan.”	We now understand Chris’s political views and how he is a follower of the Republican Party. He would follow this party as long as they helped America with the issues at the time.
Chapter 12, pg. 125	“Whenever we were out driving and saw a hitchhiker,” she says, “if he looked anything like Chris, we’d turn around and circle back. It was a terrible time.”	Chris’s absence had a major effect on how his parents acted. His parents were not the same after Chris left but Chris did not care because he was glad to get away from his parents.
Chapter 13, pg. 128	“My parents can’t help wondering- and I admit that I can’t either- how things might have turned out different if Chris had taken Buck with him.”	There is a chance that if Chris had taken his dog Buckley with him on his journey, he might have never went to Alaska and starved to death. Chris was responsible for his dog and he would have never put him in danger.
Chapter 13, pg. 129	“In a letter delineating his quarrels with Walt and Billie, Chris once wrote to her, “Anyway, I like to talk to you about this because you are the only person in the world who could possibly understand what I’m saying.”	Chris had a hard time living with his parents, but it helped him become close to Carine. He had a strong relationship with her and felt she was the only person who cared about him.
Chapter 14, pg. 134	“My suspicion that McCandless’s death was unplanned, that it was a terrible accident, come from reading those few documents he left behind and from listening to the men and women who spent time with him over the final year of his life.”	Chris did not intentionally try to kill himself because he was not that dumb. Chris’s death was an accident because people know what happened to him.
Chapter 14, pg. 134	Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please.	Chris was pressured by his dad to do well in his life and Chris became so confused. He left home just to get away from all the chaos occurring at home.
Chapter 15, pg. 155	“As a young man, I was unlike McCandless in many important regards; most notably, I possessed neither his intellect nor his lofty ideals.”	Chris was very smart and had knowledge of what was happening around the world. Chris also had crazy ideas about what he wanted to do and always had good ideas.
Chapter 15, pg. 156	“In my case-and, I believe, in the case of Chris McCandless-that was a very different thing form wanting to die.”	Chris did not want to die when he went to Alaska but rather for the excitement. Chris did not understand what death was and how it felt so he did not go to Alaska to die.
Chapter 16, pg. 158	“Alex was clean-shaven and had short hair, and I could tell by the language he used that he was a sharp fella.	This description from Gaylord Stuckey describes some of the physical characteristics of Chris. This description really describes Chris before he went on his journey: very smart and had good hygiene.
Chapter 16, pg.	“Said he didn’t want to see a single person, no airplanes, no sign of civilization.”	This is just the way Chris likes to live his life. He does not like to be near or around people for too long and he wanted to prove himself he could survive on his own.
Chapter 17, pg. 173	Unlike McCandless, however, I have in my backpack a 1:63, 360 scale topographic map (that is, a map on which one inch represents one mile.)”	The map that Krakauer had when he went into the bush would have been very helpful to Chris during his stay in Alaska. If he could have had a map, he could have found an alternate route through the Teklanika River and maybe would not have starved to death.
Chapter 17, pg. 178	“The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn’t among them.”	Chris did a lot of things wrong on his stay in the Stampede Trail that ultimately cost his own life. Even though the Alaskans think Chris mistook a caribou for a moose, Chris was smart enough to know he killed a moose, not a caribou.
Chapter 18, pg. 191	“On July 14, he began consuming the pealike seedpods of the plant as well, probably because the roots were becoming too tough to eat.	By this time, Chris was beginning to become desperate for any kind of food he could find. He had to eat the seeds for food and did not even know or care if they were toxic or not.
Chapter 18, pg. 195	“Laid low by the moldy seeds, McCandless discovered that he was suddenly far too weak to kike out and save himself.”	The effects of the moldy potato seeds were really getting to him by this point. Chris lost all of his energy and the end of his life was near.
Epilogue, pg. 202	“After a long beat she declares, to herself more to anyone else, “He must have been very brave and very strong, at the end, not to do himself in.””	Chris did not want to face death and he did everything he could to survive. Chris was very brave in Alaska and was trying to fight his illness.
Epilogue, pg. 203	“There is much about Chris that still baffles him and always will, but now he is a little less baffled. And for that small solace he is grateful.”	During his life, Chris did certain things that really confused his parents and made them think, “What was Chris thinking?” But now after seeing the place where Chris died, his parents now understand him a little more.

Source- http://www.thequietman.org/?p=186

At the conclusion of this novel, I think Chris was a reckless idiot and not very smart for what he did because all he did was travel around the West and hitchhike, which does not accomplish anything. It was mostly his fault that he died because he was obviously unprepared for the Alaska wilderness and he got himself into such a terrible situation. Chris did not deserve all of the media attention for what he did and he set out on his journey to find answers to all of his problems, but all he found was death.