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Can you provide three examples from Into The Wild that show Chris McCandless as a rebel?
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Chris McCandless is depicted as a rebel in Into The Wild through his rejection of societal norms and government regulations, as shown by his disdain for hunting licenses. His rebellious nature is also evident in his refusal to follow school rules, resulting in failing grades. Additionally, his rejection of materialism and pursuit of a simple, adventurous life further illustrate his nonconformist attitude.
One of my favorite quotes from McCandless happens in the very first part of the book. Krakauer is narrating about an encounter that Jim Gallien had with McCandless right before McCandless left on his Alaskan adventure never to be seen alive again. Gallien was asking McCandless some simple questions about how prepared he would need to be, and Gallien asked McCandless about a hunting license. McCandless's response clearly shows him as a rebel against the government because he doesn't like anybody putting rules on him.
“No, thanks anyway,” Alex replied, “I’ll be fine with what I’ve got.”
Gallien asked whether he had a hunting license.
“Hell, no,” Alex scoffed. “How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. Fuck their stupid rules.”
I think it also has to be said that McCandless's rebellious nature might simply be a part of genetic coding. Some readers might say that McCandless wasn't...
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a rebel until he discovered his dad's infidelity, but McCandless's third grade teacher tells a different story.
His teacher pulled us aside and told us that ‘Chris marches to a different drummer.’
The drummer that McCandless hears is himself, and he does things his own way because he either likes it that way or does it his own way simply in order to not be a rule follower. This is why McCandless got an F on a lab report in school. He simply thought the formatting rule was stupid and therefore should be ignored.
Chris thought it was a stupid rule and decided to ignore it.
McCandless might be a rebel for no other reason than he wants to be his own person, and doing what everybody else is supposed to do doesn't allow him to be his own person.
A gifted French-horn player, as a teen he was a member of the American University Symphony but quit, according to Walt, after objecting to rules imposed by a high school band leader. Carine recalls that there was more to it than that: “He quit playing partly because he didn’t like being told what to do but also because of me. I wanted to be like Chris, so I started to play French horn, too. And it turned out to be the one thing I was better at than he was. When I was a freshman and he was a senior, I made first chair in the senior band, and there was no way he was going to sit behind his damn sister.”
Chris is a rebel first because of anger at his parents, people he accuses of trying to buy his love with material goods. He rejects their values and tries to live as simply as possible. He writes:
I'm going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect.
Second, Chris rebels against the materialism of U.S. culture because he believes a simpler life is a more joyful and fulfilling life, writing: "The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up." Later, he writes that he has found "the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent."
Finally, he believes the core of life lies in embracing adventure, not living a monotonous middle-class existence. As he writes to his friend Ron Franz"
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an ever-changing horizon ...
Chris's reading of Thoreau and Tolstoy, his strong will, his desire to live fully and authentically and his rebellion against his parents' values led him to adopt a counter-cultural lifestyle, one, he said, that filled him with great joy.