It was mentioned in Chapter 6 of the novel entitled “Into the Wild” that Christopher McCandless tried to convince Ronald Franz that he must stop living an ordinary life and start living an exciting one by using the argument that, “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure” (Krakauer, 2009). McCandless knew that Franz was already 80 years old and living a lonely life after losing his son to an accident. In fact, Franz was so lonely that he tried to even adopt McCandless to become his own son which was rejected by McCandless because he did not want to be the property of anybody. He wanted to be as free as possible while enjoying the beauty of nature.
Thus, because McCandless knew that Franz already had a limited time to live in this world, he encouraged him to start trying to live a more adventurous life and take risks. He said, “Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life” (Krakauer, 2009). Even if Franz was not a believer of adventures, he still followed this advice of McCandless because he realized himself that there was nothing else left for him to do at 80 years old. He had experienced everything in life already except living a nomadic lifestyle which was being done by McCandless. Because Franz knew that he would not lose anything if he would follow the advice of McCandless, he went to the campsite where he and McCandless first met, and he stayed there for eight months. Franz was excited to see McCandless once again, but his excitement turned into sadness upon learning that Franz died during one of his adventures. Franz found it hard to accept the death of McCandless who successfully convinced him to become adventurous. He felt that he lost another son after McCandless died, so he blamed God for this tragedy and went back to becoming an alcoholic once again after being sober already for a long time.
Work Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing, 2009.
