The Parallel Lives of Chris McCandless and Siddhartha

Jon Krakauer's portrayal of the life of Chris McCandless creates a vision of a young man who became completely lost and eventually met his death on an expedition of self-discovery. In Herman Hesse's short novel, Siddhartha, the fictional title character, is also a reflection of the noble idealism and wild narcissism that marked McCandless's charter. It seems to be merely dumb luck that, unlike McCandless, Siddhartha did not meet his death on his own search for the true Self. Siddhartha seems no less stubborn, foolish, or ill-prepared than McCandless was when he set out on his "great Alaskan adventure," and yet Siddhartha was fortunate enough to escape with his life. Regardless of survival, both men misguidedly believed that the abandonment of others was necessary in order to find true enlightenment.

Chris McCandless and Siddhartha both set off on personal quests to find the Self, or Atman, as it is called in many Indian religious traditions. The Atman is the innermost reality of a person or the spiritual essence of life. Throughout history, religions and philosophers have had varying interpretations, but most seem to agree that comprehension of the true Self provides infinite wisdom and freedom within oneself.

Both Siddhartha and McCandless judged the reward of finding the Self as the most important knowledge a man can ever hope to learn. For example, Siddhartha searched for Atman in every aspect of his life often derailing himself in the process. As Hesse writes, "He believed that everything else, every other worldly pursuit that people sought after in life was - a detour, error" (Hesse p.5). Chris McCandless shard this harsh judgment and unbending analysis of his family, friends, and all those around him that tried to show him love. In an effort to rid himself of all these "detours" he abandoned everything but a few possessions and disconnected from his past life. He though he could find his true Self by hitchhiking across the United States to Alaska. He tried thumbing his way to Atman.

"When someone is seeking," said Siddhartha, "it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal (Hesse p.113).

Hesse's direct language confirms the consuming nature of Siddhartha's search for Atman. Siddhartha's contempt for the tired rituals and mundane lives of the people he encountered in his childhood fueled his lifelong exploration for the Self through insatiable excess at life's extremes. At different times in his life, he lived in the woods with ascetic monks, pursued women and possessions, became a high-stakes dice addict, and even envisioned committing suicide. Despite Siddhartha's reckless obsession with finding ultimate truth, his search eventually awarded him inner peace and happiness. In the parallel life of Chris McCandless, the same reckless passion lead to his death, alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

Born a Brahmin's son, Siddhartha entered life with privilege not known by most Indians. He had fine clothes and servants, and he spent his childhood listening to priests and reading the holiest of Hindu texts, the Vedas. Centuries later, Chris McCandless knew a similar lifestyle. He was the son of upper-middle class parents in suburban Virginia. Walt McCandless, Chris's father, was a Brahmin with a necktie. As a NASA engineer, he was an extremely educated man and well respected within his community, much like Siddhartha's father. Chris had also just graduated from Emory, a prestigious Southern university. He had his own car and over $24,000 in the bank. Regardless of their opportunities to remain among the elite, both McCandless and Siddhartha abandoned their daily existence in search of something they felt their current surroundings and "normal" daily lives could not provide.

[Siddhartha] had begun to suspect that his worthy father and his other teachers, the wise Brahmins, had already passed on to him the bulk and best of their wisdom, that they had already poured the sum total of their knowledge into his waiting vessel; and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still (Hesse p.3).

This kind of selfish idealism caused both men to fiercely reject their families and ignore the good-natured advice and deep spiritual teachings of all other authority figures they met along their journeys. Both men felt so compelled to abandon the desires of society and the wisdom of others that they each left their respective homes to find Atman in a rush of naive enthusiasm. McCandless believed finding the Self, the part of himself that really mattered, could only be realized in solitude. McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. As Krakauer writes, "He demanded much of himself - more, in the end, than he could deliver" (Krakauer p.184). Throughout his life, McCandless challenged himself to live by a strict code of moral principles. Even before his fatal journey to Alaska, McCandless constantly felt the need to test his spiritual convictions in any way possible.

He had a need to test himself in ways, as he was fond of saying, "that mattered." He possessed grand - some would say grandiose - spiritual ambitions. According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all (Krakauer p.182).

Early in his spiritual journey, McCandless believed that he could find Atman by traveling alone down the Colorado River. McCandless piloted his second-hand canoe through the desert with the dream of eventually reaching the Gulf of California. Something about the unadorned landscape and harsh geography of the land called to him. In Krakauer's words, "The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in serene geology and clean slant of light" (Krakauer p.32). In his own words, McCandless set off into the American desert to find "the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found" (Krakauer p.37).

Similarly, Siddhartha abandoned the teachings of the Brahmins and challenged himself to find Atman through solitary meditation while traveling with the Samanas. During his time spent with ascetic monks, Siddhartha learned how to abandon many of his human desires and live without shelter, clothing, or food. Despite the physical and mental deprivation, neither Siddhartha nor McCandless discovered a higher truth by discarding their possessions. For both men, their time as ascetics only served to fuel their discontent and feelings of emptiness. Although the idea is rather simplistic, both men believed that by abandoning their possessions they would automatically rid themselves of everything but the true Self. They were both searching for Atman outside of themselves.

At one point, Siddhartha confronts a man named Gotma, the Buddha or Illustrious One, and questions his teachings. Like McCandless, Siddhartha believes that no one can teach him the things he wishes to know. "That is why I am going my way - not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone - or die" (Hesse p.28).

The unusual parallel between Chris McCandless and Siddhartha does not end when they emerge from the woods and abandon the ascetic lifestyle. For a brief period, both men reentered society and experimented with a conventional existence. For McCandless this meant an extended stay in Bullhead City, Arizona where he held a full-time job at McDonald's and opened a savings account at a local bank (Krakauer p.39). The departure from survival living and entry into the corporate machine of the fast-food industry seemed to be the most unlikely path McCandless would choose to take. Based on the first-person accounts of friends Jan Burres, Wayne Westerberg, and Ronald Franz, working for a worldwide corporation like McDonald's would have been in direct opposition to the ethical and social code McCandless professed to live by. Although his departure from idealistic pursuits seems unusual, Siddhartha also encountered a similar situation in which he allowed himself to be controlled by the working of business. For a time, Siddhartha became obsessed with his own wealth and the possessions and women that it afforded him. While Krakauer can only speculate on the reasons for McCandless's employment and subsequent stay in Bullhead City, Hesse provides some insight into Siddhartha's similar fascination with the mainstream life of those around him.

And yet he envied them; the more he became like them, the more he envied them. He envied them the one thing that he lacked and that they had: the sense of importance with which they lived their lives, the depth of their pleasures and sorrows, the anxious but sweet happiness of their continual power to love (Hesse p.62).

Ultimately, the life of common existence and materialism could not satisfy Chris McCandless or Siddhartha. McCandless soon returned to the road and commented on his distaste for Bullhead City and the "plastic people" he worked with at McDonald's. McCandless felt that in order to find Atman he needed to test himself again. As Krakauer has noted, he seemed to believe that he could not win unless he risked losing it all. For Siddhartha, gambling on dice provided the same perverse pleasure that McCandless experience by pitting himself against nature.

He loved that anxiety, that terrible and oppressive anxiety which he experienced [during the game of dice] during the suspense of high stakes. He loved this feeling and continually sought to renew it, to increase it, to stimulate it, for in this feeling alone did he experience some kind of happiness, some kind of excitement, some heightened living in the midst of his satiated, tepid, insipid existence (Hesse p.64).

Siddhartha is eventually able to break away from the addiction of meaningless wealth and power, but it nearly kills him. After surviving a suicide attempt, Siddhartha is finally able to reconcile his mind and the world around him by listening to the silent wisdom of a river. With a newfound inner peace, Siddhartha finally forgave himself and all the others that he had grown to distain. The story of Siddhartha seems to provide closure to the search for Self that was missing from McCandless's life. Although Hesse's story ends with Siddhartha as an old man who is completely alone, his spiritual journey ends with the realization of Atman, inner peace, and personal growth. Siddhartha finally understands that the meaning and reality he so desperately sought were not hidden somewhere, but instead were right in front of him. Through Siddhartha's inner monologue, Hesse shows that his character has finally found freedom within himself and is in harmony with the world around him.

I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it (Hesse p.116).

Conversely, it is impossible to to whether McCandless finally found what he was looking for while hitchhiking across the United States. For his extravagant dreams of finding true enlightenment, it is unknown if McCandless was ever able to see the beauty of the world as it really is, instead of just the way he wished it could be. McCandless seemed to be searching for Atman with a thumb out, always looking for the next road that might lead him to self-discovery. It's tragic to think that he abandoned everyone in pursuit of happiness, and yet this isolation is what eventually lead to a painful death, alone in the woods outside Healy, Alaska. The only solace comes from one of Chris McCandless's last inscriptions, written inside the school bus where he died. It reads, "Happiness is only real when shared."