Jon Krakaure’s national bestseller, Into The Wild, tells the cautionary story of Chris McCandless’ treacherous journey into the Alaskan wilderness. The first time reading Into The Wild, the reader develops an idea that Chris is rebelling against his parents, against the materialistic society and even against himself. But, when the reader reads the book more carefully, they discover that Chris is also a hero, in a way, because he is brave and courageous enough to reject most of the important things he grew up with, his family and materialism, and venture out ‘into the wild’. There are tensions between the different, yet similar roles of being a hero and being a rebel and Chris ultimately fails to differentiate them and dies alone of starvation.…show more content… The dynamic in this book can be compared to any superhero movie where the hero is the ‘good guy’ and the rebel is the ‘bad guy’. Both of those characters are well known for the extreme place they stand on the spectrum, the hero always does the right thing and is a good example, while the rebel tries to intercept the hero’s path. The main tension between the two roles is that each side wants to have more power and ultimately wants to overcome the other side in the end. In comparison to Chris McCandless’ character, he metaphorically stood before a diverging path: one side leading to the path of rebels and on the other side leading to path of heroes. Chris had plenty of money in his bank account, he was accepted into a great college and his parents even offered to pay for his law school. It would have been an easy decision for Chris to continue down the path more favored by society and live a good life. But no, Chris decides to take ‘the path less traveled’ and ventures out into the wild and escapes his troubles. From Chris’ perspective it is easier for him to choose the path of being a rebel because as a rebel, he can make up rules as time passes and live the way he wants. Chris choses to do so instead of being courageous and remaining in society and facing challenging problems in the future, possibly even more challenging than the ones he faced in the wild. Heroes look for ways to deal with situations that are thrown
