This books brings about a lot of conflicting emotions for me. But one thing is for sure, book Alexander Supertramp is waaaay less annoying then movie Alexander. I don't know why, but I really really find Emile Hirsch super annoying. Whew. Now that I've got that out of my system, let me go ahead with my review.Jon Krakauer, as usual, really knows how to tell a story. Mormons, Everest, idealistic kid, all become page turners. This story is about young Christopher McCandless. Smart, upper middle class family who seemed to love him, bright future. But there's something unusual about him. Finishing college was just something he did to complete his familial obligations. After college, he left home, disappeared of the face of the earth, gradually casting off all his worldly belongings to tramp all around Ameica. Hitchhiking and walking, all to meet his ultimate goal of staying in Alaska alone.
Krakauer makes a mostly positive portrayal of McCandless. The people who he meets with and has relationships along the way seem to like and admire, and even love him. He was a nice, friendly and personable boy. He has deep ideologies and philosophies about how he wanted to live a life out of the ordinary. But he was also naive, unprepared and selfish. This ultimately lead to his death by starvation in the Alaskan not so wilderness.
In that sense, that is why i feel so conflicted about him. I mean, I get it. Why he did it. I feel the urge all the time to just leave it all behind and just live how I want to. To experience life, the road and the wild. But also being a family woman, I know that I could never do what he did to my family. It really was very selfish. Not just to his family but to all the people he met along the road who came to love him. It's not just himself he's hurting but all these other people.
Whatever one's feeling of McCandless is, the book wa undoubtedly interesting and compelling and makes you think about what you want to do and to what extent you would do it.
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