McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 5

      "On the face of it, Bullhead City doesn't seem like the kind of place that would appeal to an adherent of Thoreau and Tolstoy, and ideologue who expressed nothing but contempt for the bourgeois trappings of mainstream America. McCandless, nevertheless, took a strong liking to Bullhead. Maybe it was his affinity for the lumpen, who were well represented in the community's trailer parks and campgrounds and laundromats; perhaps he simply fell in love with the stark desert landscape that encircles the town."4
Chapter 5. Page 39. Paragraph 3.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 4

      "Shortly after the moose episode McCandless began to read Thoreau's Walden. In the chapter titled "Higher Laws," in which Thoreau ruminates on the morality of eating, McCandless highlighted, "when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than in came to."

Chapter 16. Page 167. Paragraph 6. 

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 3

      "Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata," in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces "the demands of the flesh." Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless's distinctive hand. And in the chapter on "Higher Laws" in Thoreau's Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCandless circled "Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it."
Chapter 7. Page 65-66. Paragraph 4.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 2

      "No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,-that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are highest reality.... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment if the rainbow which i have clutched." (Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Passage Highlighted In One Of The Books Found with Chris McCandless's Remains)
Chapter 6. Page 47. Paragraph 1.

McCandless vs. Thoreau Quote 1

      "Lori Zarza, the second manager, has a somewhat different impression of McCandless. "Frankly, I was surprised he ever got hired," she says. "He could do the job-he cooked in the back-but he always worked at the same slow pace, even during the lunch rush, no matter how much you'd get on him to hurry it up. Customers would be stacked ten-deep at the counter, and he wouldn't understand why I was on his case. He just didn't make the connection. it was like he was off in his own universe."
Chapter 5. Page 40. Paragraph 3.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 5

      "Unlike Muir and Thoreau, McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul. He soon discovered, however, what Muir and Thoreau already knew: An extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one's attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds."
Chapter 17. Page 183. Paragraph 3.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 4

      "The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn't among them."
Chapter 17. Page 178. Paragraph 1.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 3

      "Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals. That ambivalence turned to remorse soon after he shot the moose. It was relatively small, weighing perhaps six hundred or seven hundred pounds, but it nevertheless amounted to a huge quantity of meat. Believing that it was morally indefensible to waste any part of an animal that has been shot for food. McCandless spent six days toiling to preserve what he had killed before it spoiled."
Chapter 16. Page 166. Paragraph 2.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 2

      "As a young man, i was unlike McCandless in many important regards; most notably, I possessed neither his intellect nor his lofty ideals. But I believe we were similarly affected by the skewed relationships we had with out fathers. And i suspect we had a similar intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar agitation of the soul."
Chapter 15. Page 155. Paragraph 3.

Krakauer’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 1

      "McCandless didn't conform particularly well to the bush-casualty stereotype. Although he was rash, untutored in the ways of the back country, and incautious to the point of foolhardiness, he wasn't incompetent-he wouldn't have lasted 113 days if he were. And he wasn't a nutcase, he wasn't a sociopath, he wasn't an outcast. McCandless was something else-although precisely what is hard to say. A pilgrim, perhaps."
Chapter 8. Page 85. Paragraph 1.

Society’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 5

      "The prevailing Alaska wisdom held that McCandless was simply one more dreamy half-cocked greenhorn who went into the country expecting to find answers to all his problems and instead found only mosquitoes and a lonely death."
Chapter 8. Page 72. Paragraph 3.

Society’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 4

      "During those four weeks in Carthage, McCandless worked hard, doing dirty, tedious jobs that nobody else wanted to tackle: mucking out warehouses, exterminating vermin, painting scything weeds."
Chapter 7. Page 62. Paragraph 3.

Society’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 3

      " "He seemed extremely intelligent," Franz states in an exotic brogue that sounds like a blend of Scottish, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Carolina draw. "I thought he was too nice a kid to be living by all that hot springs with those nudists and drunks and dope smokers." After attending church that Sunday, Franz decided to talk to Alex "about how he was living. Somebody needed to convince him to get an education and a job and make something of his life." "
Chapter 6. Page 51. Paragraph 1.

Society’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 2

       " "It wasn't up to McDonald's standards to come in smelling the way he did. So finally they delegated me to tell him that he needed to take a bath more often. Ever since I told him, there was a clash between us. And then the other employees-they were just trying to be nice-they started asking him if he needed some soap or anything. That made him mad-you could tell. But he never showed it outright." "
Chapter 5. Page 41. Paragraph 1.

Society’s attitude toward McCandless Quote 1

      " "I don't think he ever hung out with any of the employees after work or anything. When he talked, he was always going on about trees and nature and weird stuff like that. We all thought he was missing a few screws." "
Chapter 5. Page 40. Paragraph 5.

McCandless’ attitude toward a flawed society Quote 5

      "Then, in a gesture that would of done both Thoreau and Tolstoy proud, he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand-a pathetic little stack of ones and fives and twenties-and put a match to it. One hundred twenty-three dollars in legal tender was promptly reduced to ash and smoke."
Chapter 4. Page 29. Paragraph 2.

McCandless’ attitude toward a flawed society Quote 4

      "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-shelter style of life that will at first appear crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty." (Letter to Ron from Alex (Chris McCandless) while he was living in North Dakota.)
Chapter 6. Page 57. Paragraph 1.

McCandless’ attitude toward a flawed society Quote 3

      "McCandless had been infatuated with London since childhood. London's fervent condemnation of capitalist society, his glorification of the primordial world, his championing of the great unwashed- all of it mirrored McCandless's passions. Mesmerized by London's turgid portrayal of life in Alaska and the Yukon, McCandless read and reread The Call of the Wild, White Fang, "To build a fire," "An Odyssey of the North," "The Wit of Porportug." He was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London's romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness."
Chapter 5. Page 44. Paragraph 2.

McCandless’ attitude toward a flawed society Quote 2

      "He always wore shoes without socks-just plain couldn't stand to wear socks. But McDonald's has a rule that employees have to wear appropriate footwear at all times. That means shoes and socks. Chris would comply with the rule, but as soon as his shift was over, bang!- the first thing he'd do is peel those socks off. I mean the very first thing. Kind of like a statement, to let us know we didn't own him., I guess."
Chapter 5. Page 40. Paragraph 2.

McCandless’ attitude toward a flawed society Quote 1

      "I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life. (Leo Tolstoy, "Family Happiness"; Passage highlighted in one of the books found with Chris McCandless's remains.)" Chapter 3. Page 15. Paragraph 1.