Main Influences and How They Affected McCandless in Into The Wild Essay Example

In the story, Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, Christopher McCandless experiences many influences in his life, all of which cause him to grow. Even though McCandless came from a rough childhood, new influences caused him to become smarter and more knowledgeable every time. McCandless was influenced in mostly positive ways by his peers, thus pushing McCandless to be courageous and noble.

Wayne Westerburg, for example, gave McCandless a job and proved that even though Chris’ father did not care much for him, other people did. When in need of housing, Westerburg said, “‘Why don’t you come on up to Sunburst, spend the night in the trailer?’”(Krakauer 17). With his experiences with Westerburg, McCandless found that the world was full of good people but, sometimes those people needed to be searched for. Throughout McCandless’s time working for Westerburg, McCandless found his boss to become somewhat of a father figure. This caused McCandless to grow his nobility, becoming respectful to anyone he came in contact with because no matter how rough that person seems on the outside, they could have a heart of gold. Westerburgs influence was so effective that McCandless even promised: “to come back to South Dakota in time for harvest… ” (Krakauer 62). Instead of being arrogant, McCandless wanted to show that he was loyal to Westerburg and would come back to help. Throughout his journeys, McCandless understands that disrespecting those that have helped you the most can cause the most harm.

Christopher McCandless’s father was influential passively through negativity, McCandless still grew from his rough experiences with his father. At a young age, Walt was living a double life, and “when Walt’s double life came to light, the elevations inflicted deep wounds” (Krakauer 121). Even though finding out his father was living a secret life hurt McCandless, he still learned from what happened. Instead of letting the negativity hurt him, he pushed through the pain and learned that the negativity would force him to grow and mature faster, making him smarter overall. What Walt did would stick with McCandless forever and even “made his ‘entire childhood feel like a fiction’”(Krakauer 123). With his complete childhood ruined McCandless understood that he needed to grow fast and adapt to new change quickly. McCandless was courageous for not allowing his father to affect what he wanted to do with his life. McCandless understood that it was his and his father who could do nothing about that. Even though he left his family behind, this does not mean that he is narcissistic or arrogant. Instead, it means that he wanted to escape the evil in order to find personal happiness, something he did not share with his family.

Christopher McCandless was not an arrogant or narcissistic man, instead of turning those who helped him away, he tried his best to keep promises and help where help was needed. In the case of his father, he decided it was best to go away from the hate and grow from what happened. Chris’s experiences lead to his courage. Starting with his father and ending with Jim Gallien: the last man to ever talk to Chris, all had a positive impact. Chris may have been stubborn, but he was not arrogant.