It reminds me so much of On The Road, because Christopher, so like Dean Moriarty is travelling the road on the search for something...more. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but it's more than an average life. The brief blurb on the front of the book reads:
"In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burnt all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself..."
“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.”
But that is just the beginning of the story. McCandless travels through America, climbing and hiking. On his travels he adopts the name "Alexander Supertramp" and meets several people who become huge characters in the book and who Christopher forms real attachments to. My favourite parts are the connections he forms with other people on his travels which show him to be a genuine and likeable person and also the ending where he is so sadly betrayed by his own want of self sustainability.
 |
| Christopher McCandless in front of The Magic Bus |
"Happiness is only real when shared."
The book has also been adapted into a fantastic film by Sean Penn, with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless, very much worth a watch, but I wholly recommend the book to all.
