Character Trait Chart

Chapter and Page #	Description/ Quote	Impression of Chris
Chapter 1: Pg.4	"He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most"	Very young
Chapter 1: Pg.  6	"'But he wouldn't give an inch. He had an answer for everything I threw at him.'" (Jim Gallien)	Determined and sometimes downright obstinate
Chapter 1: Pg. 6	"'He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldn't wait to head out there and get started.'" (Jim Gallien)	Instead of being scared, he was excited to go into the wilderness
Chapter 2: Pg. 12	"S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE. I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE."	Though he was undaunted at first, McCandless did become desperate in the last days of his life
Ch. 3: Pg. 18	"He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was, he'd do it: hard physical labor,...jobs where you'd get so … dirty you couldn't even tell what you looked like at the end of the day." (Wayne Westerberg)	He was a hard worker and didn't care how messy or disgusting the job was
Ch. 3: Pg. 18 & 20	"He read a lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes, he tried to hard to make sense of the world…" (Wayne Westerberg) "In May 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta...with a 3.72 grade-point average."	Chris was smart, but tended to over-think things
Ch. 3: Pg. 22	" At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence."	In the modern and civilized world, Chris felt kind of stifled and cut off from what he felt life was meant to be like.
Ch. 4: Pg. 29	"McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with the law, savoring the intermittent company of other vagabonds he met along the way."	Chris genuinely enjoyed and appreciated every moment and event of his long road trip.
Ch. 5: Pg. 40	"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...He just didn't make the connection. It was like he was off in his own universe." (Lori Zarza)	Chris was very capable of doing things, but he often was in his own world and did things his way.
Ch. 5: Pg. 46	"He was smart. He'd figured out how to paddle a canoe down to Mexico, how to hop freight trains, how to score a bed at inner-city missions. He figured all of that out on his own, and I felt sure he'd figure out Alaska too." (Jan Burres)	Chris wasn't just book smart. He could figure out how to do things in the wild and get through things on his own.
Ch. 6: Pg.  52	"Not infrequently during their visits, Franz recalls, McCandless's face would darken with anger and he'd fulminate about his parents or politicians or the endemic mainstream American life."	Chris had a lot of pent up anger against the world and it came out in angry mood swings.
Ch. 6: Pg. 55	"McCandless was thrilled to be on his way north, and he was relieved as well--relieved that he had again evaded the impeding threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it."	Chris may not have minded being around people, but he didn't want any close or lasting relationships.
Ch. 7: Pg. 63	"Alex had been using it [the microwave] to cook chicken, and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere. It wasn't that he was too lazy to clean it up...it was just that he hadn't noticed the grease." (Wayne Westerberg)	"Alex" was smart, but lacked some common sense.
Ch. 7: Pg. 66	"McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire...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."	Chris's passion for nature overshadowed his desire for women, and he might have thought himself above relationships.
Ch. 8: Pg. 85	"Like Rosellini and Waterman, McCandless was a seeker and had an impractical fascination with the harsh side of nature. Like Waterman and McCunn, he displayed a staggering paucity of common sense. But unlike Waterman, McCandless wasn't mentally ill. And unlike McCunn, he didn't go into the bush assuming someone would automatically appear to save his bacon before he came to grief."	Chris may have had an almost unhealthy fascination with wild nature and a lack of common sense, but he was not crazy and fully realized that he could die.
Ch. 9: Pg. 96	"...it sounds like this McCandless kid was like that: We like companionship, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again." (Ken Sleight)	Chris didn't mind human company for a certain amount of time, but eventually he wanted to be on his own.
Ch. 10: Pg.  102	"Chris almost always had short hair and was clean shaven." (Sam McCandless)	When he was at home, Chris looked more clean-cut than when he was traveling.
Ch. 11: Pg.  107	"Even when we were little… he was very to himself. He wasn't antisocial -- he always had friends, and everybody liked him -- but he could go off and entertain himself for hours. He didn't seem to need toys or friends. He could be alone without being lonely." (Carine McCandless)	Chris had friends, but he didn't really seem to need them and often preferred to spend time by himself.
Ch. 11: Pg. 109	"Chris was fearless even when he was little...he didn't think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him back from the edge." (Walt McCandless)	From an early age, Chris was willing to take risks.
Ch. 11: Pg. 115	"He was intensely private but could be convivial and gregarious in the extreme. And despite 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."	McCandless' personality contradicted itself and was very puzzling.
Ch. 12: Pg. 118	"Chris was good at almost everything he ever tried...which made him supremely overconfident. If you attempted to talk him out of something, he wouldn't argue. He'd just not politely and then do exactly what he wanted." (Walt McCandless)	Chris thought that he could do anything he wanted, and did not take other people's cautions seriously.
Ch. 12: Pg. 120	"He would be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years."	Chris's personality could change drastically from kindness to his "darker side"
Ch. 12: Pg. 122	"If something bothered him, he wouldn't come right out and say it. He'd keep it to himself, harboring his resentment, letting the bad feelings build and build." (Carine McCandless)	When Chris was bothered, he kept his feelings inside, where they grew into something much bigger.
Ch. 13: Pg. 131	"His name was printed wrong. The label said CHRISTOPHER R. MCCANDLESS. His middle initial is really J. It ticked me off that they didn't get it right. I was mad. Then I thought, 'Chris wouldn't care. He'd think it was funny.'	McCandless didn't dwell on little things like a mistake in a name. Instead, he laughed them off.
Ch. 14: Pg. 134	"When the adventure did indeed prove fatal, this melodramatic declaration fueled considerable speculation that the boy had been bent on suicide from the beginning, that when he walked into the bush, he had not intention of ever walking out again. I'm not so sure, however."	Chris may have known that the Alaskan wilderness might claim him, but he did not intend to kill himself.
Ch. 16: Pg. 159	"He was a dandy kid. Real courteous, and he didn't cuss or use a lot of that there slang. You could tell he came from a nice family." (Gaylord Stuckey)	McCandless may not have wanted any close relationships with people, but he was perfectly pleasant.
Ch. 17: Pg. 184	"His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself--more, in the end, than he could deliver."	Chris's life had a purpose, but he demanded a lot of himself and did not want comfort. The journey for his purpose is eventually what killed him.
Ch. 17: Pg. 183	"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."	McCandless did not set off in to the wild with the intent of seeing the landscape, but instead to discover himself.
Ch. 18: Pg. 198	"Recognizing the gravity of his predicament, he had abandoned the cocky moniker he had been using for years, Alexander Supertramp, in favor of the name given to him at birth by his parents."	Chris knew that his condition towards the end of his life was deteriorating fast and that there was no guarantee he would survive.
Ch. 18: Pg. 198	"Chris would never, ever, intentionally burn down a forest, not even to save his life. Anybody who would suggest otherwise doesn't understand the first thing about my brother. " (Carine McCandless)	Chris would not harm the wilderness, even to save himself.
Ch. 18: Pg. 199	"He is smiling in the picture, and there is no mistaking the look in his eyes: Chris McCandless was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God."	Chris seems to have come to grips with the fact that he was dying and was at peace in the last few days of his life.

Reaction

In my opinion, Chris McCandless was overly obsessed with the harsh side of nature, and in that way was a little crazy. He did have some noble ideas and goals, but the ways that he tried to achieve them showed that he lacked respect for nature and some common sense. Chris was smart and could figure many things out on his own, but he was over-confident in his own abilities and thought that he didn't need the things that other people do to survive the wild. Chris did seem to truly enjoy his travels in the wilderness and, in general, seemed like a kind person who simply had a darker side and tended to over-think things. Ultimately, though, it was his pride, over-confidence, and lack of common sense that killed him.