Into the Wild

Amazon's recommendation system is responsible for me stumbling upon Sean Pean's Into the Wild and I'm glad I did. Another magnet was the fact that Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam created soundtrack for the film, which I'd known for quite a while without realizing it was made for this purpose.

Into the Wild retells the true story of Chris McCandless, a freshly minted college graduate, who decides to reject the demands of his parents and society by embarking on a lonesome journey across the United States and, finally, into the wilderness of Alaska.

Driven by a sense of hurt and pointlessness that he'd experienced in what seemed on the outside like a respectable American family, Chris develops a reclusive, reflective personality that puts him at odds with the pursuit of happiness as understood by most people. Instead of joining the race for materialistic gains, career and comfort, he is atracted to literature and moral values, especially those that highlight self-reliance, attachment to nature and reduction of earthly desires. His role models are the likes of Henry David Thoreau or Jack London and the characters they created.

Assuming the new name of Alexander Supertramp, Chris buys essential supplies and sets out to live on the road mostly on berries, herbs and wild fruit. His ultimate destination is the wilderness of Alaska, where he hopes to put his philosophy and endurance to the test by living away from civilization. Before he gets there, he spends long months temping at a large farm in South Dakota, rambling around with a hippie commune somewhere in California and making friends with people he bumps into as he braves on. Many, young and old, are attracted and inspired by his principled, off-the-beaten-path approach to things, but he does not discover how important other people are until it is too late.

Eventually, Supertramp starves to death after facing long odds in Alaskan wilderness for a couple of months and failing to find a way back from a camp he'd made in an abandoned hunting shelter deep into the Stampede Trail.

The story of Chris McCandless gained massive popularity following Jon Krakauer's article in the Outside Magazine and his subsequent book Into the Wild. Oddly, despite its tragic end, it inspired many other adventurers to attempt similar stunts. Many others see what McCandless did as a manifestiation of bipolar disorder and a perilous outlet for frustrations with the way modern society batters individualism.