"Into the wild"

I've just finished reading John Krakauer's book "Into the wild", about Chris McCandless, who died in Alaska in 1992 after attempting to live in the wilderness on his own.
     Krakauer originally wrote an article in Outside magazine, following the discovery of Chris' emaciated corpse in an old bus in the muskeg north of Mount McKinley, where McCandless had been living alone, subsisting on roots and berries and the results of his hunting.  The article created a storm of interest. Some admired Chris' determination and bravery, to create a life for himself outside of mainstream society; others, many native Alaskans among them, decried his naivety and foolishness, his belief that he could live alone in one of the harshest climates on earth and survive where many, better equipped and more knowledgeable than he, had perished before him.
      Krakauer became fascinated by Chris' story and expanded his initial article into this book. A film was also made. 
      McCandless grew up in a wealthy household in Washington, D.C., but had rejected his parents and their values to become a wanderer and some would say, a derelict. He lived his life close to the bone, working itinerantly, travelling in little-known and little-visited parts of the United States. He was a well-educated, thinking young man, particularly in love with the writings of Tolstoy, Thoreau and Jack London. He believed that the true nature of life lay in nature itself, that there was a more real and intense way of living one's life than in the everyday grind of consumer culture. His was a complex personality, and this is what Krakauer attempts to explore in this book.
       The author does not judge Chris, and this is what makes this book stay in my mind. He relates what happened, and the years leading up to it, in a compassionate way, showing facets of Chris' complex personality that were sometimes contradictory, sometimes difficult to accept. The question we are left with at the end of the book is not "why did he do this?" but "Can we really know another person?" The answer, sadly and perplexingly, is no.