Chris McCandless's Personality & Good Looks.

Chapter and page #	Description/quote from novel	What impression you get about Chris with this character trait or description?
Chapter 1, page 4	“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 fowr a few month.’”	Chris is not physically fit for walking into such a dangerous environment.  He seems a little crazy.
Chapter 2	“When they flew away, they took McCandless’s remains, a camera with five rolls of exposed film, the SOS note, and a diary- written across the last two pages of a field guide to edible plants- that recorded the young man’s final week in 113 terse, enigmatic entries.” (pg.13) “At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighed sixty-seven pounds.” (pg.14)	Chris had very few items with him while he was in Alaska, he only kept what he thought was necessary. But, the few things he did have left with him completely summed up his last few years. McCandless was extremely unhealthy at the time of his death.
Chapter 3	“McCandless was smallish with the hard, stringy physique of an itinerant laborer. There was something arresting about the youngster’s eyes. Dark and emotive, they suggested a trace of exotic blood in his heritage- Greek, maybe, or Chippewa- and conveyed a vulnerability that made Westerberg want to take the kind under his wing.” – Wayne Westerberg (pg.16) “He had the kind of sensitive good looks that women made a big fuss over, Westerberg imagined. His face had a strange elasticity: It would be slack and expressionless one minute, only to twist suddenly into a gaping, oversize grin that distorted his features and exposed a mouthful of horsy teeth. He was nearsighted and worse steel-rimmed glasses. He looked hungry.” –Wayne Westerberg (pg.16-17)	The way Wayne Westerberg described McCandless gave me a clear look of what he looked like and why so many people were willing to take him in This also gave me another clear picture of McCandless, but this gave me a better physical description of him. He wasn’t a very ugly or scary looking guy, when he was clean shaven he looked like a normal guy.
Chapter 4	“McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with the law, savoring the intermittent company of the other vagabonds he met along the way.” (pg. 29) “Can this be the same Alex that set out in July, 1990? Malnutrition and the road have taken their toll on his body. Over 25 pounds lost. But his spirit is soaring.” – McCandless (pg.37)	McCandless was pleased by the minor things in life. Such as the beauty of the earth, and not by family and friends. Chris knew that he wasn’t in a very healthy state. He knew that he wasn’t the same person as when he first started, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was keep traveling.
Chapter 5	“But in truth he was real good with the dogs. They’d follow him around, cry after him, want to sleep with him. Alex just had a way with animals.” – Jan Burres (pg. 45) “After an extended argument Burres also got McCandless to accept some long underwear and other warm clothing she though he’d need in Alaska. ‘He eventually took it to shut me up,’ she laughs, ‘ but the day after he left, I found most of it in the van. He’d pulled it out of his pack when we weren’t looking and hid it up under the seat.’”	This showed that Chris truly did have a way with nature and animals. Also, it showed that he seemed more content playing and socializing with animals then human beings. McCandless didn’t want any other help from people. He wanted what he thought he NEEDED and didn’t expect anything from anyone else to help him out unless he asked.
Chapter 6	“He was polite, friendly, well-groomed.” (pg. 50) “Wearing jeans and a wool sweater; McCandless looks tan, stron, and healthy.” (pg. 55)	Chris knew how to be nice, social, and clean when he wanted to be. This shows that Chris wasn’t always scrawny, unhealthy, and malnourished. Before his trip he was completely and 100% healthy and good looking.
Chapter 7	“When McCandless hugged Borah good-bye, she says, ‘I noticed he was crying…’” – Gail Borah (pg. 68) “‘My mom doesn’t like a lot of my hired help,’ Westerberg says, ‘and she wasn’t real enthusiastic about meeting Alex, either. But I kept bugging her, telling her ‘You gotta meet this kid,’ and so she finally had him over for supper. They hit it off immediately. The two of ‘em talked nonstop for five hours.’” – Wayne Westerberg (pg. 67)	Chris knew that even though he didn’t plan on being that long, there was a massive chance that he would never come back, and he was actually upset about it McCandless always seemed to make a big impression on people that are extremely difficult to talk to or get along with. He had a special way of opening up to those kinds of people and getting along with them.
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10	“Chris almost always had short hair and was clean shaven. And the face in the picture was extremely gaunt. But I knew right away. There was no doubt. It was Chris.” – Sam McCandless (pg. 101-102) “Across the top of the first one, dating from McCandless’s initial visit to Carthage, in 1990, he had scrawled ‘EXEMPT EXEMPT EXEMPT EXEMPT’ and given his name as Iris Fucyu. Address: ‘None of your damn business.’ Social Security number: ‘I forget.’ But on the second form, dated March 30, 1992, two weeks before he left for Alaska, he’d signed his given name: ‘Chris J. McCandless.’ And in the blank for Social Security number he’d put down. ‘228-31-6704.’” (pg. 101)	Chris’s entire had changed so much that it was hard to recognize him, but his family knew right away At first, McCandless wanted to be completely unknown by the world, carrying no information or leaving no information of who he used to be. But, over two years, he decided that he was going to leave all his true information with Westerberg and let his true identity be known.
Chapter 11	“He was very to himself. He wasn’t antisocial- he always had friends, and everybody liked him- 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.” – Carine McCandless (pg. 107) “‘He was always raising wildlife,’ says Billie. ‘He’d find some animal in a trap, take it home, amputate the injured limb, heal it, and then let it go again. Once my dad hit a mother deer with his truck, making an orphan of its fawn. He was crushed. But he brought the baby deer home and raised it inside the house, behind the woodstove, just like it was one of his kids.’” – Billie McCandless (pg. 108)	Chris was never an outcast; people truly did like him. Sometimes, he just didn’t want to be around people. He was completely independent. Billie is talking about how her dad had a special way with animals. This relates to Chris because, he too, also had a special way with animals and loved being around them.
Chapter 12	“When he walked into the Annandale house, he had a scruffy beard, his hair was long and tangled, and he’d shed thirty pounds from his already lean frame.” (pg. 118) “Chris’s smoldering anger, it turns out, was fueled by a discovery he’d made two summers earlier, during his cross-country wanderings. When he arrived in California, he’d visited the El Segundo neighborhood where he’d spent the first six years of his life. He called on a number of old family friends who still lived there, and from their answers to his queries, Chris pieced together the facts of his father’s previous marriage and subsequent divorce- facts to which he hadn’t been privy.” (pg. 121)	Even before Chris’s big adventure, he took many other trips and was already used to letting himself go. Chris had been holding a lot of anger in and finally he started to take it out on everyone around him. Come to find out he had found out about his father’s marriage and began to completely hate and despise his parents.
Chapter 13	“‘What’s amazing,” says Carine as she studies these images of her brother, ‘is that even though the pictures were taken ten years apart, his expression is identical.’” – Carine McCandless (pg. 127-128) “’I just don’t understand why he had to take those kind of chances,’ Billie protests through her tears. ‘I just don’t understand it at all.’” – Billie McCandless (pg.132)	Carine noticed that Chris was always the way he was. He didn’t change over a period of time. He was born the way he always was. Even though Chris traveled and took risks all the time because he enjoyed it, his parents never truly understood why he would want to do such a thing. They never understood what Chris was about.
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16	“MCandless was candid with Stuckey about his intent to spend the summer alone in the bush, living off the land. ‘He said it was something he’d wanted to do since he was little,’ says Stuckey. ‘Said he didn’t want to see a single person, no airplanes, no sign of civilization. He wanted to prove to himself that he could make it own his own, without anybody else’s help.’” – Gaylord Stuckey (pg. 159) “McCandless was a weak swimmer and had confessed to several people that he was in fact afraid of the water.” (pg. 170)	McCandless shared his true intentions of going out into the wild with one person, and this truly reflects on McCandless and his ideas of life so far. Chris wasn’t completely fearless, and the one thing that probably would have been most useful on his trips was to overcome his fear of water. Even though he took a canoe trip hundreds of miles in the West, he admits to being afraid of water.
Chapter 17	“Andy Horowitz, one of McCandless’s friends on the Woodson High cross-country team, had mused that Chris ‘was born into the wrong century. He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today’s society gives people.’” – Andy Horowitz (pg. 174) “The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent.” –Roman (pg. 186)	It wasn’t like Chris was hard to figure out. People understood what he liked and what he wanted to do, it just wasn’t normal and still isn’t normal to do this day in age. Adults don’t understand why young people do the things that they do. So, the people that tried to understand McCandless without meeting him, talking to him, or spending time with him can’t even try to understand why he did what he did.
Chapter 18	“HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.” (pg. 189) “Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God.” (pg. 199)	McCandless knew that even though he was happy with the way he was living his life and how he was on his own, his accomplishments weren’t as amazing without someone to share them with. He was lonely. Even towards the end, McCandless was still happy with everything he had accomplished and done. He was truly happy, even though he knew he was going to die.

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