This approach proved fatal for McCandless in late 1992 when realizing that the Teklanika River was much higher than when he first crossed it the previous April. It was the only way he knew to hike out of the bush and he admitted that he was a weak swimmer. He was forced to turn back and take shelter in the bus.
Starvation set in and by August he was too weak to walk. Krakauer reported in an article he wrote for Outside magazine that McCandless had eaten Hedysarum McKenzii, the sweet pea plant, which is poisonous. In his book Into the Wild he then confirmed that the seeds of the wild potato plant, Hedysarum Alpinum are what killed him. The two plants are similar and to the inexperienced eye it would be easy to mistake one for the other. But McCandless was cautious up to a point. He was careful to select the Hedysarum Alpinum, the roots of which are not harmful but when they became too tough to eat he unwittingly ate the seeds which caused him to starve.
Unlike Krakauer and many readers, who have a largely sympathetic view of McCandless, some have expressed negative views about those who romanticize his fate. Alaskans have been particularly skeptical.
Alaskans fault Krakauer for romanticizing McCandless, thereby encouraging others to model themselves after his life. Before the film has even been released, it has become common to blame Hollywood for further glamorizing a senseless tragedy. As Dermot Cole, a columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, puts it, "To sell the story, they've made it into a fable. He's been glorified in death because he was unprepared. You can't come to Alaska and do that."
Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: "I am exposed continually to what I will call the 'McCandless Phenomenon.' People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent. When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he had had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament. Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide."
Butch Killian, one of the moose hunters who discovered McCandless's body in September 1992, considered it just another day in the bush and doesn't understand why such a big deal has been made out of the story. He told that he had never read the book and had no idea that it had been a bestseller, that thousands of people had felt a deep identification with Krakauer's portrait of McCandless. "I don't know what his problem was, but it wasn't surviving. If he's a hero, he's a dead hero." Killian doesn't think that a visit to the site will provide many answers. "So many people have asked me to take them out there. What in the world would you want to go back there for? It's nothing but an old bus."
Jon Krakauer defends McCandless, claiming that what critics point to as arrogance was merely McCandless's desire for "being the first to explore a blank spot on the map." Krakauer continues that there remain extremely few areas on the world map that would be called 'blank'.
Sean Penn, who in 2007 directed the Supertramp’s portrayal movie, Into The Wild, thinks the story is about something profound and universal in the human spirit, a longing for freedom and a pure connection to the natural world that's been lost. "I'm not trying to romanticize him," insists Penn, who has little patience for McCandless's critics. "There are few people in Alaska who have done anything comparable to what Chris did. We're not talking about a week with another buddy and ATVs hunting. This was 113 days, 79 of them by choice. And he did pretty damn well. Did he make mistakes? Sure. A lot of people do. But however many miles he needed to walk to become a man was up to him. So I think he did very well by any standard, including Alaskan."
Part 4: The legacy
With a head full of Jack London and Thoreau, McCandless renamed himself "Alexander Supertramp," cut all ties with his family, gave his trust fund to charity, and embarked on a two-year odyssey that brought him to Alaska, a place that he thought to be a blank spot on the map where he could test the limits of his wits and endurance. Setting off with little more than a .22 caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice, McCandless hoped to find his true self by renouncing society and living off the land. For many years after his body was found, his story continues to resonate as an epic tale, blurring the lines between living memory and the creation of a legend.
With the mythology that has grown up around the story, it is easy to forget that McCandless was a real flesh-and-blood person. He clearly believed in self-mythologizing, in the power of storytelling and self-invention. Had he lived, perhaps he would have gained enough perspective to tell the story himself, rather than leaving it for others to tell. As it is, he has entered the realm of myth, and myths are shaped by those who can make use of them.
Years after his tragic death, the McCandless Phenomenon continues to be a disputable matter among people. Many have thought of him to have been a real life hero who sought for the true essence of life by committing solitary contemplating ventures; people who consider him as reckless, foolish, and an inconsiderate idealist are not lesser than his proponents, nevertheless.
