••• Chispas y Resplandores •••

explorethefear asked: i totally respect you and your opinion of into the wild.. but chris mccandless did get something. he was looking for happiness, which he found on the road a spirtual reawkening which i believe he got in the last pages of the story when he annotated that book saying "happiness only real when shared" which showed he didnt want to hitch around by himself. also he died happy and in a peaceful state, happier than before he was in alaska.

then perhaps I suppose his family simply didn’t make him happy the way he wanted, which is fine, but I do not agree that he died happy, his SOS scrawled into the van used his real name (no evolution in character) and referred to God (something he had rarely done) in praying that someone come, in addition, he also noted that it was “not a joke” and stressed how serious his condition was and how desperately he wanted to get out of there.  When the end was truly upon him, he may have thought a million things, but I doubt very much that any single one of them contained the phrase, “glad I made it out here.”  I don’t mean to sound cynical, all of his last notes outlined wishing he had listened to logic and wishing that he was back.  That’s not finding what you’re looking for, that’s remorse and regret - and since he’s not remorseful or regretting his transgressions against others, rather his own poor decisions, I just don’t think that every school’s English curriculum should put it on such a pedestal of the “finding of self,” because his journey wasn’t finished when he passed away, and while I love the idea of celebrating an unfinished journey, he had no counterpart to carry it forward.