A Read on the Wild Side

Just finished Into the Wild. The driven young man, Chris McCandless, who is the subject, and who died in Alaska after 112 days in the wilderness, is a very modern sort of hero. Superficially Thoreauvian, he actually is neither post-Unitarian transcendentalist, nor Native American on a vision-quest, nor religious mystic of any stripe. In strenuous riskiness, in the harsh wild, he seeks a secular purity that our tainted, bloated, sadly compromised culture cannot provide. Finally, though, he is engaged in an adolescent rite of passage. For a particular sort of young man this will be necessary and messy, and—if he dies—awful and beautiful. But is it worth it? After all, if he lives he'll just come back, get a job, settle down, go soft, and lose his groove. Still, though, is it right that our society's ideal is coming to be a life with no risk?