Characterization of Chris McCandless

Chapter and page #	Description/quote from novel	What impression you get about Chris with this character trait or description?
Chapter 1, pages 1, 2, 4	“Eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. A rifle protruded from the young man’s backpack, but he looked friendly enough.” “Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be 24 years old and said he was from South Dakota.  He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and ‘live off the land for a few months.”	Chris is not physically fit for walking into such a dangerous environment.  He seems a little crazy.
Chapter 2, page 12, 14	“A peek through a window revealed a Remington rifle, a plastic box of shells, eight or nine paperback books, some torn jeans, cooking utensils, and an expensive backpack.” “Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days of weeks prior to death.  At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains 67 pounds.”	Chris was did not have nearly as much things as he needed to. He was not well prepared.
Chapter 3, pages 16-18	“McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. He had the kind of sensitive good looks that woman made a big fuss over. He was nearsighted and wore steel-rimmed glasses. He looked hungry.” “McCandless quickly became enamored of Carthage. He liked the community’s stasis, its plebeian virtues and unassuming mien. That fall he developed a lasting bond with both the town and Wayne Westerberg.”	Chris was strong and handsome. He had a kind of intelligent look, too. Carthage was like a second home for Chris.
Chapter 4, page 30	“He was wearing long shorts and this really stupid hat. He looked pretty pitiful. He was a nice kid. And he was big-time hungry. But real happy.” “He was a really good kid.  We thought the world of him.”	Chris seems like a teenager. He is never well feed. Bob and Jan were like his second parents.
Chapter 5, page 40, 42	“I don’t think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything. When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws.” “A pretty nice guy. Didn’t like to be around too many people. Temperamental. He meant good, but I think he had a lot of complexes. Never said much. He’d get moody, wouldn’t like to be bothered. Seemed like a kid who was looking for something, just didn’t know what it was.”	Chris is shy and doesn’t like people much. He seems like he needs a lot of space.
Chapter 6, page 50-52	“He was polite, friendly, and well-groomed. He seemed extremely intelligent. I thought he was too nice a kid to be living by that hot springs with those nudists and drunks and dope smokers” “Franz grew increasingly fond of McCandless. ‘God, he was a smart kid.”	Chris is well-educated and has very good manners. He has a very good impression on people.
Chapter 7, page 63, 67	“He was kind of shy at first. He acted like it was hard for him to be around people. He was a big eater. He was a good cook, too.” “Once Alex made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.”	Chris is stubborn and gets along with people once he gets to know them.
Chapter 10, pages 101-102	“His hair was long, and he had a beard. Chris almost always had short hair and was clean-shaven. And the face in the picture was extremely gaunt.”	Chris had changed a lot. He didn’t care what people thought because he was in the wilderness.
Chapter 11, page 107, 111	“Even when we were little, he was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial- he always had friends, and everybody liked hum- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn’t seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely.” “Chris had so much natural talent, but if you tried to coach him, to polish his skills, to bring out that final ten percent, a wall went up.”	Chris could entertain himself with nothing but himself. He was also very stubborn and liked to figure things out on his own.
Chapter 12, page 118-119,	“Chris was good at almost everything he tied, which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn’t argue. He’d just nod politely and then do exactly what he wanted.” “He could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years.”	Chris was stubborn, but he was polite about it. He was just like his father.
Chapter 13, page 128	“Chris stares at the lens with the same pensive, recalcitrant squint, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of an important thought and was annoyed to be wasting his time in front of the camera.” “Chris didn’t think twice about risking his own life, but he never would have put Buckley in any kind of danger.”	Chris is caring about others, but not so much about himself. He overthinks a lot of things, which means he is always in a deep thought, so he doesn’t like to be bothered much.
Chapter 16, page 158-166	“Alex was clean-shaven and had short hair, and I could tell by the language he used that he was a real sharp fella. He wasn’t what you’d call a typical hitchhiker.” “Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals.”	Chris was not meant to be an outdoors man. He hated killing animals.
Chapter 17, page 180-181	“By design McCandless came into the country with insufficient provisions, & he lacked certain pieces of equipment deemed essential by many Alaskan. This has been regarded as evidence not just of stupidity but of the even greater sin of arrogance.” “Because both were perceived to have lacked a requisite humility; both were thought to have possessed insufficient respect for the land.”	I agree he had some stupidity in him. I don’t agree that Chris had an insufficient respect for the land. Krakauer wrote a whole chapter about how Chris took time and absorbed the beauty of the land around him.
Chapter 18, page 199	“Chris would never, ever, intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life. Anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn’t understand the first thing about my brother.” “He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes; Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.”	I find Chris smart and stupid at this time. I totally understand that he never wanted him to burn down a fire but he should have down something else. I mean look where it got him, at least he did in peace.

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