Monday, December 17, 2007
It is not good for man to be alone, not only at Christmas Time
ed on him by a dysfunctional family: money, reputation, success were things his parents pursued, even if it meant living a sham, always fighting and almost getting a divorce. This confirms for him that happiness is not found in civilization, capitalist pursuit and bourgeois living, but in “new experiences” and finding oneself.So McCandless drives on, making friendships, but then abandoning them again in his quest for solitude and self-fulfilment. He meets Ronald Franz, an old widower and becomes good friends with him (so much so that the latter wants to adopt him). At some point Franz points out to him that he needs to learn to forgive, whatever his parents have done to him; Franz should know, since he lost both his wife and son in a car crash with a drunk driver. Eventually McCandless, who by now calls himself “Alexander Supertramp”, makes it Alaska and lives for more than three months in the wild, living on rice, small game that he shoots, and wild berries. It is likely those berries were the cause of his death, since he probably mistook poisonous for edible ones.
Supertramp kept a diary, which is the basis for the current film version of the story (Into the Wild). One entry is both profound and tragic: “Happiness is only real when shared”. It seems that he tried to make it back to civilization, but the river he had forded on the way in was now too high to cross; so he stayed and died. Watching the film I was reminded of a verse in the first book of the Bible: “It is not good for man to be alone”. Contrary to Walden and Jack London, escaping civilization and returning to the primeval state of hunter and gatherer is not the path to happiness. Society in the original sense of the word, companionship, friends, this is the place where human beings become themselves. Or as the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber puts it: “Through the Thou a person becomes I” Supertramp would of course argue that his most intense experience of companionship, namely his family life, has left him deeply jaded and sceptical. 
And he is right: enemies will hurt you, and so will friends, and everybody in between. Human relationships will at times lead to pain, hurt and disappointment.
Only forgiveness allows us to continue to be friends, to continue to be human. But running away is not an option; Jean Paul Sartre claims that “hell is the others”; but in fact evil is in each of our hearts, and we will meet it even in the wilds of
