Friday, January 28, 2011

In what chapter of Into the Wild does McCandless give his money to charity?

Christopher McCandless gives his money to charity in
Chapter 3, entitled "Carthage."


Chapter 3 recounts Chris's
graduation from college and his activities immediately thereafter. Chris had received "a
forty-thousand-dollar bequest left by a friend of the family;" the money had paid for
the final two years of his education at Emory University in Atlanta, and at the time of
his graduation, "more than twenty-four thousand dollars" remained in Chris's account.
Chris's parents had assumed that he would use the remaining money to go to law school,
but to their surprise, they soon found that he had donated the entire sum to OXFAM
America, "a charity dedicated to fighting hunger."


Although
Chris had dutifully completed the requirements to earn a degree in history and
anthropology, he planned, once he graduated, to do exactly what he had yearned to do all
his life. Announcing to his parents that, "on principle, he would no longer give or
accept gifts," he shed virtually all trappings of materialism, cut himself off from
family and acquaintances, and took to the road. Donating all his money to charity was
the first in a series of gestures in Chris McCandless's declaration of his own
emancipation. After graduation, he essentially separated himself from all ties,
obligations, and acts of conformity, and spent the rest of his short life as a vagabond,
inventing "an unfettered new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow
in unfiltered experience."

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