Do you think if Chris found a way to forgive his parents for their mistakes ,would he have gone to such extremes in his search of finding himself?
Had Chris learned to forgive, he might still be alive today. His anger at his parents led him to behave recklessly, and yet much of his behavior throughout his teenage years was in fact reckless. I think that the greatest contribution to Chris' extreme behavior came from self-imposed isolation. He'd taken things so far and isolated himself from so much, that he couldn't find his way back.
From Gradesaver;
How is McCandless’s difficulty forgiving a driving force in his journeys?
McCandless, though largely driven by his principals and morals to live a rootless, anti-materialist existence, also seems at least partially driven forward by a desire to punish his parents. He resents their pressure for him to go to law school, their materialism, and what he sees as their attempts to control him, so he tells Carine that he is going to cut them out of his life completely because he cannot forgive them. In not contacting them at all while he is on the road, he turns his odyssey into a tool for punishment, at least on some level.
http://www.gradesaver.com/into-the-wild/study-guide/essay-questions/
