top 10 list

Katherine Hunsaker

English 8-3

3/10/10

Top 10 List:

1. My favorite quote is when he writes on the bus, “Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, ‘Cause “The west is the best.” And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the great white north. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become Lost in the Wild.

Alexander Supertramp

May 1992

2. My second favorite scene in the book is when he fools his parents into thinking he’s going to college, but he takes his car, burns all his money and ID, and becomes a hitchhiker. I like this scene because this is when he becomes actually free from civilization.

3. The most irritating/sad thing in the book is that it was juts 2 or 3 weeks when people found him dead in the abandoned bus. If he had eaten berries or caught one animal or if he survived somehow, he would have been rescued and his life would have been saved.

4. I loved how he met people when he was on his way to Alaska; he made new friends every stop and was a very likeable guy. I believe people liked him for his sharp mind and unique personality and desire to be a hitchhiker. His deceiving looks attracted only the real Samaritans to help him.

5. Something that stunned me was that he hated his parents so much. They never abused him but were just simply trying to be normal parents like any other couple. His personality was just too stubborn to get along with them. I felt sad for his parents when he ran away and didn’t even tell them where he was going, what he was doing, etc. His parents loved him very much and couldn’t believe it.

6. This brings us to his relationship with his sister. Since he didn’t like his parents, his sister was the closest to him in his family. He always wrote her letters and they kept in touch most of the time when he was gone. I suspect that the sister knew he was going to break away, the real question was when he was going to break away.

7. One of the many characteristics I loved about Chris McCandless that kind of relates to me is he doesn’t like to have new things when the old ones work perfectly fine. For example, for graduation his parents got him a new car and he was very upset. Because, when his old car worked perfectly fine and he loved it, he didn’t want a new one. I feel the same way…why spend the money when you don’t need anything new?

8. Another trait I loved about him was that he loved the wilderness. He was extremely smart for his age, reading all kinds of deep books and understanding the symbolism of the books about nature. He didn’t care about the outside world or what anyone else said, he was on a mission. Dying is what it took to realize happiness only comes from human relations instead of being a loner, even how great nature is won’t bring you eternal happiness.

9. I did not like in the book how the author switched stories when you were right in the middle of another. It was quite annoying to the point where you want to skip the pages until you get to Chris’s story.

10. Last, I absolutely loved the movie they made. When it showed his death, it symbolized him going into heaven in a way, it was really neat. In the book, I loved seeing all the real pictures of Chris McCandless/Alex Supertramp leaning against the bus, or any other pictures. It gave me an idea what he was going through. I loved Into the Wild overall.