What quotes from Into the Wild suggest that Chris McCandless is foolish?

The opening interactions between Chris McCandless and Jim Gallien hold some solid quotes that support the idea that McCandless is more foolish than adventurous. Readers are told that Gallien is an accomplished woodsman, so he knows how to survive in the Alaskan wilderness, and he knows that it is a difficult thing. One of things that Gallien reported to author John Krakauer is that McCandless was not properly equipped for the sort of "adventure" that McCandless was hoping for:

“He wasn’t carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you’d expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip,” Gallien recalls.

Gallien points this out to McCandless and even offers to drive him into town and help him properly supply. McCandless is so foolish and set upon the idea that he will be fine that McCandless turns down the offer:

Gallien offered to drive Alex all the way to Anchorage, buy him some decent gear, and then drive him back to wherever he wanted to go.

“No, thanks anyway,” Alex replied, “I’ll be fine with what I’ve got.”

Obviously, McCandless was not fine with what he had, and by the end of the novel, even Krakauer is somewhat accusatory of McCandless being foolish. Krakauer goes on to explain that besides lacking the proper clothing, footwear and hunting equipment, McCandless was foolish enough to enter the Alaskan wilderness without a proper map. We are told in the Gallien exchange that McCandless had a simple road map, but that was hardly useful in the Alaskan wilderness. What McCandless should have had was a topographic map of the area. Krakauer believes that if McCandless had that simple item, he likely would have been able to survive his ordeal:

Because he had no topographic map, however, he had no way of conceiving that salvation was so close at hand....

Thinking that his escape route had been cut off, he returned to the bus—a reasonable course of action, given his topographical ignorance....

If McCandless had possessed a U.S. Geological Survey topographic map, it would have alerted him to the existence of a Park Service cabin on the upper Sushana River, six miles due south of the bus, a distance he might have been able to cover even in his severely weakened state.

This question could be somewhat difficult or even problematic to answer if a reader doesn't at all agree with calling McCandless a hero; however, McCandless is very similar to men from American history who were quite revered for their eccentricities and passion for nature and isolation. Men like Henry David Thoreau and John Muir would be good examples, and Krakauer does not shy away from those comparisons in his text.

His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion—Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently—to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, misfits, and adventurers. Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too powerful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos itself. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska.

Notice how the quote emphasizes that McCandless's yearnings for nature were seemingly so powerful that no human could stop them. That sounds incredibly heroic and something that might be said about a Marvel superhero or Greek god.

It is also possible to think of McCandless as heroic because of how rebellious he was. He simply did not like conformity. He wanted to pursue his own personal freedoms; he could be considered a poster child for the mottos of carpe diem, minimalism, and/or anti-government. He did whatever he wanted and didn't believe that he should have to conform to any rules, regulations, or societal norms. In heroic stories, the hero often must act outside of the law in order to achieve their good deeds.

“Hell, no,” Alex scoffed. “How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. Fuck their stupid rules.”

This is a very interesting question to consider, as Krakauer in his riveting account of Chris McCandless's life reports the way in which otehrs dismiss him as an example of arrogance, naivety and youthfulness whilst also indicating the way that there was something special about his character and looking at the impact he had upon so many. One of my favourite quotes regarding the character of McCandless is in Chapter Seventeen, when Krakauer answers some of the critics who are quick to dismiss Chris McCandless as just an arrogant young man:

He had a need to test himself in ways, as he was fond of saying, "that mattered." He possessed grand--some would say grandiose--spiritual ambitions. According to the moral absolutism that characterises McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all.

This points towards the unyielding nature in which Chris McCandless lived his life. He remained true to his beliefs and absolutism, even when that resulted in his death. There is something heroic about that, and Krakauer is careful to present McCandless as someone whose "life hummed with purpose." In addition, he includes the comments of Roman, who says about Chris McCandless:

Sure, he screwed up... but I admire what he was trying to do. Living completely off the land like that, month after month, is incredibly difficult. I've never done it. And I'd bet you that very few, if any, of the people who call McCandless incompetent have ever done it either, not for more than a week or two. Living in the interior bush for an extended period, subsisting on nothing except what you hunt and gather--most people have no idea how hard that actually is. And McCandless nearly pulled it off.

Therefore there is enough evidence in this excellent book to point towards McCandless being a hero and not being the unwise, arrogant young man that so many seem ready to dismiss him as being.

What quote from Into the Wild characterizes Chris McCandless?

Regardless of what you think of McCandless, you owe those feelings to how well Krakauer presents McCandless to readers. Krakauer does an excellent job of mixing both direct and indirect characterization throughout the book, but an excellent example is in chapter 1. Krakauer characterizes McCandless by directly telling us details about him, having other characters describe him, and showing us through indirect characterization what a unique person he was.

For example, in the third paragraph of chapter 1, Krakauer directly describes McCandless's height and build:

"Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. Five feet
seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota.

A bit later in the chapter, Krakauer presents readers with a bit of characterization that Gallien provided to Krakauer. Krakauer interjects his own writing with quotes from Gallien that directly describe McCandless's intelligence and behavior:

The more they talked, the less Alex struck Gallien as a nutcase. He was congenial and seemed well educated. He peppered Gallien with thoughtful questions about the kind of small game that live in the country, the kinds of berries he could eat — "that kind of thing."

My personal favorite example of indirect characterization occurs when Gallien asks McCandless about his hunting license. McCandless's reply succinctly shows readers that McCandless is a guy that takes risks, goes his own way, and doesn't really want to be told what to do:

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."

You might like to review Chapter 11, which gives us important information about Chris's upbringing and what he was like as a child and how he developed into the young man he became. There are lots of quotes from this chapter that could be used to answer your question, but you might like to think about this one, that is rather balanced in the way that it presents Chris:

McCandless's personality was puzzling in its complexity. He was intensely private but could be convivial and gregarious in the extreme. And despire his overdeveloped social conscience, he was no tight-lipped, perpetually grim do-gooder who frowned on fun. To the contrary, he enjoyed tipping a glass now and then and was an incorrigible ham.

What draws my attention to this statement is the way that it shows how the character of Chris McCandless defies easily categorisation. Krakauer presents us with stereotypes that Chris is shown not to fit, pointing towards the "complexity" of his character and the dangers of writing off his death with answers that are too easy and do not really penetrate the depths of his character.

Are there any quotes from Into the Wild that portray Chris McCandless as "stupid?"

The book is written from as dispassionate a viewpoint as Jon Krakauer could manage, so most of the judgemental quotes come from interviews and other people. However, Krakauer makes sure to warn those who might try to follow Chris's example that Chris made many mistakes in his attempts to live in the wilderness:

I bring up McCandless's hubris and the dumb mistakes he made -- the two or three readily avoidable blunders that ended up costing him his life.
(Krakauer, Into the Wild, Amazon.com)

Other judgements tend to focus on Chris's idealism and naivety, and most at least mention his failure to become properly prepared. The book is sympathetic, but there are many other quotes like the one above; it is clear that while many felt a connection with Chris's dreams, they also believed him to be almost on a suicide mission. Without training or taking time to learn how to survive in the wild, Chris was almost destined to die, and so even those who admired him do so without any intention to copy him.