What is a hero you may ask? The word hero can be defined in various ways but ultimately it is someone you look up to and admire. While reading the Hero’s Journey it defined being a “ hero” in many different ways. It gives a step by step apperance of what a hero’s journey should be.  Joseph Campbell does a really good job in his book getting across his point of what a real Hero’s Journey should be.

In the story Into The Wild Chris McCandless definitely shows whether or not he is a hero. The way he carried himself and the values he had made me believe that the young teenager should look up to him. Which in my opinion would make him a hero, He was not afraid to stand up for what he believes in for example, when he burned all of his money and lived off of nature. When Chris did that  he stood by his values and beliefs which are characteristics of a heros journey.

Chris McCandless in the story shows discomfort when it came to his family which to me shows one of the characteristics of a Hero’s Journey. In the Hero’s Journey it talks about the “The Ordinary World” in which Hero’s  live in a world that is considered average by those who live there. They are often called odd by the people in their community which makes them feel out of place(http://mythologyteacher.com/documents/TheHeroJourney.pdf). You can tell that McCandless feels this way in the beginning when he choses to isolate himself from everyone he knows and changes his whole life with no explanation. Throughout his journey he meets multiple people that try to grow closer to him but because of his fear of trusting others he choses to distance himself even more and not develop any relationship.

Chris McCandless did not just wake up one morning and say that I am going to leave everything I know behind and start on this long lonely journey by myself. No, instead he had a calling to journey that he needed to start and finish on his own. He knew that no one would understand what he needed to accomplish for himself. Chris knew that this was going to be a long journey but at the same time he would have to come to peace with his destiny.http://en.wikipedia.org/  

You might ask what made Chris want to start on what seems to be this awful yet heroic journey, but the answer is not so simple. Chris McCandless had a lot of things in his life that he did not like. He wanted to have the ability to determine what was going to happen in his life with no one else controlling him. Chris did not just happen to start on his journey. He planned it out and knew exactly what he was doing.

Chris goes over and beyond proving that he his a hero. His way of doing things is not always the best but he set his mind on going out completing this journey. A Hero’s Journey is not one that an ordinary person can understand. There are many things that come with being hero. A hero’s life is not an easy one and I think the book Into The Wild proves that. So I leave you with this question, If someone came to you today and asked you to be a Hero would you do it?

What are plastic people? Are they people trying to be something they are not? Or are they just people trying to make it through the miss trails and miss understandings of life. It is really hard to define what “plastic people” are in time period of life.While reading Into The Wild I found that Chris McCandless hatred towards the “plastic people”  came from an honest place.  

Chris McCandless whole life was plastic to him. He felt that after the reveal of his father having a whole other family, that nothing about him was really real. His whole life had been a complete lie that he need to get away from. He not only wanted to get away from his life. He wanted to become a new person. Chris McCandless had made up his mind he was no longer going to be a plastic person.

Someone that is plastic is just trying to make it through life. They are trying to fit into societies idea of what they should be. Society tells them that you have to be super skinny and have a lot of money and live outside of your means. So the “plastic people” being so shallow go into the world trying to model a person they can never be or will be. They buy fancy cars and live outside of their means. Plastic people put on this persona that everything is okay but if you actually look at them. If you actually look right into their eyes and pass the outer persona they have created for themselves. You can really see who they are.

You can see they are hurting and they just want to be understood and excepted into the world. A plastic person is just someone that just got lost in the world and instead of staying true to who they are. They would much whether be this made up version of what society says they should be. Chris McCandless throughout Into The Wild proves time and again that people are plastic and lie.

In Into The Wild Chris McCandless parents are a perfect example of “plastic people”.

They want Chris to be something that he is not. Whether than loving their son for him and what  he believes they push their unrealistic values on to him. They try to buy him things like cars and such to try and make Chris fit into their perfect little world where everything is just plastic. Instead of seeing that what they are doing is pushing Chris away they still continue to do the same things that caused him to hate them in the first place.

The way Chris perceived the world in 1992 is still right in 2015. I do not ever think that “plastic people” will never not exist. Society has created this ideal that you have to be just like the characters hollywood has created in movies or that news has idealized. If you try to differ from this they try to label you as nerd or not a “cool kid”. But lets be honest here for minute who wants to be a “cool kid”. Usually speaking and statistically speaking “cool kids” are the ones that have the most problems.

They grow up thinking everything should just be hand to them. That there is no hard work involved in get want you want in life. Those quote cool kids are the biggest plastic people to me. Its Chris McCandless who could see that too and this is  why he so depressedly did everything in his power to leave the life he had behind and start over.

Through out Chris’s journey he meets lots of people. Each time he met someone they would offer to help or give him something to help him on his journey but each time he would turn them. He never wanted to take help from anyone he was determined to do this by himself. But I think otherwise, I think he never took help from anyone because he could never really trust anyone. Chris had grown up in a family full of “plastic people”. When ever they would give him something they felt as though he owed them something in return. So in Chris’s mind the people that he was closest to had turned out to be “plastic” people and he felt as though if he could not even trust his own flesh blood to not be “plastic” how could he trust anyone else.