Timothy Treadwell and Chris McCandles

Esoteric Expeditions

Timothy Treadwell and Chris McCandless had completely different plans for their journeys. Treadwell gave up a life in society to become one with the bears of nature. McCandless gave up his societal life to journey into the wilderness with no exact plan, other than to find himself. Both Treadwell and McCandless, however, each find the end of their life to be taken by nature. While Treadwell and McCandless may have had varying goals in their journeys, the writer of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer, and the director of Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog, both used similar strategies of characterization to portray each individual’s alienation to society. Krakauer reveals McCandless to be someone who felt out of place in society, whereas Herzog characterizes Treadwell as someone who felt anger towards society. Both men had different intentions in their journeys into the wild. They were different in their motives for leaving society and their beliefs of society and they were similar in their unpreparedness.

McCandless and Treadwell were very different in their motives for leaving society. In the film Grizzly Man, Herzog uses many pieces of evidence to show how Treadwell truly felt about nature and society. For example, in the film, Herzog incorporates a clip of Treadwell cursing out the park rangers and society. Herzog uses this to characterize Treadwell in showing that he didn’t feel connected to society and saw it as his enemy. During the clip, the narrator explains that the park service isn’t his enemy, rather, he is simply against society as a whole. He continues by drawing a parallel between Treadwell and Henry David Thoreau. He explains that they both ventured to “fight civilization”. This part of the movies serves to show that Treadwell truly felt as an “alien to society”, because of the way he curses out the park rangers and he is disgusted by how society treats nature and his bears. This strategy of characterization shows Treadwell’s explicit dialogue as well as an insight into Treadwell’s inner thoughts. For example, he can be viewed as fighting something within himself, thus, motivating him to want to break from society and live among the animals of nature. Another example that Herzog uses is to have an in-depth interview with Treadwell’s ex-girlfriend, Jewel. Toward the end of the film, she states that when he was leaving for the wild he said, “I love you. . . if I don't come back, it's what I want. This is the way I want to go”. This again shows how disconnected he felt with society. Before leaving, he acknowledges that if he were to die on his journey, it would be what he wanted. This is a strong characterization that is incorporated and explained by Jewel. It shows that Treadwell knew the risks of dying, but he was at peace because that was the way he wanted to die. Again, this shows his detachment from society because he felt comfortable with nature rather than civilization. Similar to Treadwell, Chris mentioned similar words saying a farewell to his friends in his last postcard to them. This is a big similarity because it showed they were happy and knowing they might die in nature.

Treadwell and Mccandless were also different in how they were characterized of their beliefs about society. In Into the Wild, Krakauer uses distinct strategies to characterize McCandless. The author characterizes McCandless as detached from society. For example, according to Charlie, an old man McCandless meets on his journey, Chris “Didn’t like to be around too many people” and was temperamental. This is a direct relation to the idea that McCandless was an alien in human civilization because he was never comfortable around many other people. While he did have friends that he cared for, these all came from friends he met on his journey, away from society. He felt connected with certain people that shared relatively similar views as him as he hiked through the wilderness. This is in strong contrast with Treadwell. While Treadwell still rejected society, he still was with his girlfriend along his journey. Another time that this idea is shown when Walt, Chris’s father, explains that he once received a phone call from a construction company offering to pay for Chris’s college education if Walt convinced him to stay in Annandale and continue to work. However, Walt was unsuccessful after Chris quit his job and went off to Emory. He explains that when he tried to tell Chris of the job offer that “he wouldn’t even consider it” and his boss said “he had other plans”. This is a direct illustration