The Many Mistakes of Chris McCandless Anonymous 10th Grade

You can hear the waves crash against the shore less than fifty feet from you. Your prized car, the one that you’ve loved for years now, is stuck in the sand, unable to move. All of the money you didn't donate to charity, preventing malnutrition in the United States, is burning in front of you, smoke billowing out. You’re ready to embark on your adventure into the wild, into the depths of the Alaskan forests in hopes of finding yourself. Your name is Chris McCandless.

When Chris McCandless left his hometown of Annandale, Virginia, he was extremely unprepared for what he was going to face in the next 112 brutal days in Alaska. In his backpack, he had “little more than a .22 caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice” (Power, 1). He was hoping to discover himself and test to make sure he could live in the Alaskan wilderness with little to nothing, but instead only found himself dead. He died of starvation, which was almost inevitable when he had only 10 pounds of rice for his entire trip, although it cannot be denied that he had planned to leave much earlier, 33 days earlier, in fact, and could not because he was unprepared for the tricky condition of his new environment. Without a map, boots, a compass, more than one set of extra...