There were many individual characteristics that combined
to form the complicated person who was Chris McCandless. Because of that, there are
many quotes and passages that reveal various aspects of his personality. Fortunately,
some passages provide information and insights regarding multiple characteristics. One
such passage addresses the beginning of Chris's
adventure:
...The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest
sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. He had spent the
previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to
graduate from college. At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling
world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess,
a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of
existence.
Driving west out of Atlanta, he intended to
invent an utterly new life for himself, one on which he would be free to wallow in
unfiltered experience..he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own
destiny.
On another occasion
referred to in the book, Wayne Westerberg's mother discusses a side of McCandless that
provided motivation for his undertakings.
"There was something fascinating about
him...Alex struck me as much older than twenty-four. Everything I said, he'd demand to
know more about what I meant, about why I thought this way or that. He was hungry to
learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living
out his beliefs."
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