Please explore McCandless’ relationship with his father?

Father-son relationships play a central role in Jon Krakauer's non-fiction book, Into the Wild. Chris McCandless holds his father up as the ideal man for most of his young life. Walt McCandless inspires this idealism by holding Chris to a standard of perfection unattainable by any fallible human being. On the surface, Walt does appear to live up to his own credo, and Chris is alternately admiring of and intimidated by Walt's success. Yet, when Chris discovers that there are dark secrets lurking in Walt's past, he realizes that his ideal father is not perfect after all. Indeed, he is not even close. Understandably, Chris responds to this deception with intense anger. Perhaps if Walt had not pretended to be better than he was, or if he had not expected Chris to be as perfect as he pretended to be, maybe Chris would have been able to deal with the sudden realization of his father's imperfection in a healthier manner.

Chris's response is to seek revenge against his father. Rather than confront Walt and give him an opportunity to defend himself or at least to admit his error, Chris simply walks away from his family without a word. Through this action, Chris shows that he is still wholly dominated by his father's ideals. Even though Walt fails in his example, Chris does not recognize that the perfection Walt preached was unattainable. Chris's anger stems largely from his disappointment that Walt failed to attain perfection. Chris still expects perfection from himself. He does not release himself from his father's unrealistic expectations, he only redefines the arena in which he seeks perfection. Author Jon Krakauer believes that if Chris had not died so young, he would eventually have reached a more mature perspective on his relationship to Walt. To support this thesis, Krakauer discusses his relationship with his own father. Through this additional example, he shows that the father-son dynamic between Chris and Walt is indeed a common one, although the McCandless family represents an extreme example of this dynamic.