Chris Mccandless 'Solitude: A Return To The Self'

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Chris McCandless story truly begins when he enters the wild. In my opinion the novel grapples with how to provide oneself with true self fulfillment. Chris enters the wild to find himself and his own inner happiness and place in the world surrounding him. He does this by isolating himself from society and loved ones. In the novel a central theme is finding your true self through adventure and hardship. In chapters four, seven, and eight the author introduces epigraphs throughout each chapter to highlight what Chris is trying to accomplish. Chapter four begins with, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature by Paul Shepard. It explains how nature is a very unusual and unfamiliar place. It constantly changes depending …show more content…

Another excerpt was placed beneath this quote. It is from the Solitude: A Return to the Self by Anthony Storr, which makes the statement that throughout the world there are a plethora of diverse people among each other. Some who make "mature personal relationships and some are extremely isolated." (Chapter 7 Page 61 Anthony Storr). A few more sentences into the passage, it states that "we can see that avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life..." (Chapter 7 Page 61 Storr). These epigraphs truly identify what Chris was like. This chapter captures the time periods throughout Chris’s life in which he had obtained certain relationships with different individuals. It is said that although Chris was considered a very sociable person amongst others, he did not have any girlfriends and he had also developed a habit of separating himself from others far too often. Chris states, “I’m going to divorce them as my parents once and for all and never speak to either of those idiots again as long as I live.” (Chapter 7 McCandless Page 64). McCandless was an impulsive man who had little remorse for his actions. He was very independent in the sense that he did not need or want to rely on anyone, even his

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