23 the problem of the study which has personality discussions and the factors that affect
it, Theory of Convergence is used in analyzing the conflict and factors that affect the main character’s personality.
4.1 Character
Allport in Psikologi Kepribadian, 1983 states that “Character is personality evaluated, and personality is character devaluated”. Abramsin Nurgiyantoro,
2007:165 states that thecharacteris afigureshown in a work ofnarrativeordrama, whichbyreadersinterpreted to havecertainmoral qualitiesandtendenciesas expressed
inspeech andwhat is donein action. In this novel, Christopher McCandless is the main character. He was born in
California, US at February 12 1968 and died at August 18, 1992. He is an American Hiker, He ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with little food and
equipment, hoping to live simply for a time in solitude. Almost four months later, McCandless starved remains were found, weighing only 30 kilograms 66 lb. His
death occurred in a converted bus used as a backcountry shelter, along the Stampede Trail on the eastern bank of the Sushana River. Below the explanation of his
personality.
4.2 Personality of Christopher McCandless
Personality is a pattern of relatively permanent character anda unique character that gives consistency as well individuality fora persons behavior
FeistFeist, 2009. Allport in Friedman Schustack, 2006, states that personality
24 isdynamic organization of individual psychophysical systems that determine their
unique adjustmentto the environment. In this novel, Christopher McCandless is a main or major character because
the novel itself tells about Christopher McCandless life since he graduates from Emory University until his death in his highly desirable place, in Alaskan wilderness.
Below the personalities of Christopher McCandless found in Into The Wild novel:
a Brave
In the novel that is very clear that Christopher McCandless is an brave man. He walked, hitched, and explored America for two years before he died from
starvation in Alaska, even his fearless personality are shown since he were young, this personality is shown so much in the novel that actually the writer do not even
need to describe every single of the events. it is shown in “Into The Wild” page 29, 37 and 106:
McCandless tramped around the West for the next two months, spellbound by the scale and power of the
landscape, thrilled by minor brushes with the law, savoring the intermittent company of other vagabonds he
met along the way. Allowing his life to be shaped by circumstance, he hitched to lake Tahoe, hiked into the
Sierra Nevada, and spent a week walking on north on the Pacific Crest Trail before exiting the mountains and
returning to the pavement.Krakauer, 1996: 29 He lived on the streets with bums, tramps, and winos for
several weeks. Vegas would not be the end of the story, however. On may 10, itchy feet returned and Alex left his
job in Vegas, retrieved his backpack, and hit the road again, though he found that if you are stupid enough to
bury a camera underground you won’t be taking many pictures with it afterwards. Thus the story has no picture
book for the period May 10, 1991-January 7, 1992. But this is not important. It is the experiences, the memories,
the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in
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which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive Thank you. Thank you. Krakauer, 1996: 37
His bravery has appeared since he was young, Carine his sister said that one night, Chris went out from the house and wander to a house down the street just to
stole neighbor’s candy drawer. He did everything when he wanted it, he is a kind of kid who does not need a reason to do something.
It is impossible to know what murky convergence of chromosomal matter, parent-childdynamics, and
alignment of the cosmos was responsible, but Christopher JohnsonMcCandless came into the world with unusual
gifts and a will not easily deflected fromits trajectory. At the age of two, he got up in the middle of the night, found
his wayoutside without waking his parents, and entered a house down the street to plunder aneighbors candy
drawer. Krakauer, 1996: 106
b Independent
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English 1974:433, independent is the quality of someone which is not dependent on or
controlled by other person or things, not relying on others; no need to work for a living. Chris didn’t want his family to give him too much comfort, he want to afford
everything by himself, this personality can be seen when his parents want to give him a new car to replace his old car, but he refused , it is shown in “Into The Wild” page
20-21:
Chris only recently upbraided Walt and Billie for expressing their desire to buy him a new car as a
graduation present and offering to pay for a law school if there wasn’t enough money left in his college fund to
cover it. He already had a perfectly good car; he insisted: a
beloved 1982 Datsun B210, slightly dented but mechanically sound, with 128,000 miles on the odometer.
“I can’t believe they’d try and buy me a car,” he later complained in a letter to Carine. Krakauer, 1996:20
26 Few moments before his graduation, he did not write or make any call at all
and because he had no phone, his parents cauld not easily contact him, it leads his parents to write him about he completely dropped away from his family and what
were he doing there, of course by the way that make him offended. In his graduation later he talk to his sister Carine about that, and showing that he really didn’t like it
anyway and one thing led to another.
We were all worried when we didnt hear from him, says Carine, and I think myparents worry was mixed
with hurt and anger. But I didnt really feel hurt by his failureto write. I knew he was happy and doing what he
wanted to do; I understood that it wasimportant for him to see how independent he could be. And he knew that if
hed writtenor called me, Mom and Dad would find out where he was, fly out there, and try to bringhim home.
c Friendly
Chris is a friendly person, friendly personality can simply by looking on how somebody threat the other in the proper way. In this novel we can find that Chris
met many people and he can be easily close to everyone he met in his journey from south to the north, furthermore they very like him. it is shown in “Into The Wild”
page 1 30:
He didn’t appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. A rifle protruded from the young man’s
backpack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchikker with a Remington semiautomatic isn’t the sort of thing
that gives motorist pause in the forty-ninth state. Krakauer, 1996: 1
“We got to talking. He was a nice kid. Said his name is Alex. And he was big-time hungry. Hungry, hungry,
hungry. But real happy. Said he’d been surviving on edible plants he identified from the book. Like he was
27
real proud of it. Said he was tramping around the country, having a big old adventure. He told us about abandoning
his car, about burning all his money. I said, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ Claimed he didn’t need money.
Krakauer, 1996: 30
From the quotations above we can see that Chris is a friendly man. He met so many people along his journey and always can be easily close to them, he makes
relationship with everyone without any discriminations, he able to learn from everyone, humble and friendly to all of them.
d Intellectual
Chris is a person with some kind of intellectual brain, it is indisputable simply from how the way he think about everythings, Chrissaid to besmart becauseheisa
manwho likes to readso much heusesdifficult wordsin communicatingwith others and always tried to think really hard about stuff that unnecessary to think about, it is
shown in “Into The Wild” page 18:
“You could tell right away that Alex was intelligent,” Westerberg reflects, draining his third drink. “He read a
lot. Used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking.
Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.
A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on
things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on the next thing.”Krakauer, 1996:
18
In his early life, Chris already hold his own mindset, also the indicator that he is actually brilliant, but selfish at the same time, his parents can do nothing against
his selfishness.
28
In the third grade, after receiving a high score on a standardized achievement test, Chris was placed in an
accelerated program for gifted students. He wasnt happy about it, Billie remembers, because it meant he had to
do extra schoolwork. So he spent aweek trying to get himself out of the program. This little boy attempted to
convince theteacher, the principal—anybody who would listen—that the test results were in error, thathe really
didnt belong there. We learned about it at the first PTA meeting. His teacherpulled us aside and told us that Chris
marches to a different drummer. She just shook herhead. Krakauer, 1996:106
Another evidence in the novel that showing Chris has intellectual brain when he graduated from his university with good marks, even though he is active in
organization and also become a columnist and editor of the student newspaper, it is shown in “Into The Wild” page 20:
In May 1990, Chris graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, where he’d been a columnist for; and editor of,
the student newspaper; The Emory Wheel, and had distinguished himself as a history and anthropology
major with a 3.72 grade-point average, He was offered membership in Phi Beta Kappa but declined, insisting
that title and honors are irrelevant. Krakauer, 1996: 20 Although Burres was concerned about McCandless, she
assumed he’d come through in one piece. “I though he’d be fine in the end,” she reflects. “He was smart. He’d
figured out how to paddle a canoe downn to Mexico, how to hop freight trains, how to score a bed at inner-city
missions. He figured all of that out on his own, and I felt sure he’d figure out Alaska, too.”
From the quotations above we can see that Chris tried too hard to understand the world, why people act so bad to each other and the reality about his high grade
are enough to tells alot about his intelligent.
29
e Ambitious
Christopher McCandless is an ambitious man, although for some other sight, he is called selfish in many ways, but he still an ambitious, when he wanted to do
something, he just did it. He didn’t care about his own family members who care for him. His main problem of his ambitiousness come from his relationship with his
father, Walt McCandless, it is shown in “Into The Wild” page 64:
Westerber’s latter conjecture, as it turned out, was a fairly astute analysis of relationship between Chris and Walt
McCandless. Both father and son were stubborn and high strung. Given Walt’s need to exert control and Chris’s
extravagantly independent nature, polarization was inevitable. Chris submitted to Walt’s authority through
high school and college to a surprising degree, but the boy raged inwardly all the while. He brooded at length
over he perceived to be his father’s moral shortcomings, the hypocrisy of his parent’s lifestyle, the tyranny of their
conditional love. Eventually, Chris rebelled-and when he finally did, it was with characteristic immoderation.
Krakauer, 1996:64
Chris have ambition to against his father by disappearing, Chris learns of what his father did and grows angry at the hypocrisy of his father’s expectations.
Attempting to teach his parents a lesson as well so he decided going into the wild in Alaska.
At the conclusion of his preparations in Fairbanks, McCandless loaded up his packand started hiking west
from the university. Leaving the campus, he walked past theGeophysical Institute, a tall glass-and-concrete
building capped with a large satellite dish.The dish, one of the most distinctive landmarks on the Fairbanks
skyline, had beenerected to collect data from satellites equipped with synthetic aperture radar of
WaltMcCandlesss design. Walt had in fact visited Fairbanks during the start-up of thereceiving station and
had written some of the software crucial to its operation. If theGeophysical Institute prompted Chris to think of his
father as he tramped by, the boy leftno record of it.
30
From the dialogue above, we know that going into the wild is Chris’ biggest ambition. It is like a mission in his life and the mission to teach his to teach his parents a
lesson. Chris is very ambitious in his mission in planning it seriously.
f Idealistic
Another personality of Christopher McCandless is an idealist. In his life Chris measures himself and around him with the high standard of morality, eventhough he
didn’t just get it suddenly, but he hold it real hard and become one of his prominent personality, it is shown in “Into The Wild” page 44:
McCandless had been infatuated with London since chilhood. London’s fervert condemnation of capitalist
society, his glorification of the primordial world, his championing of the great unwashed-all of it mirrored
McCandless’s passions. Mesmerized by london’s turgid portrayal of life in Alaska and the Yukon, McCandless
read and reread the Call of the Wild, White Fang, “To Build a Fire,” ”An Odyssey of the North,” “The Wit of
Porportuk.” He was so enthralled by these tales, however that he seemed to forget they were work of fiction,
constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London’s romantic sensibilities than with the actualities
of life in the subarctic wilderness. Krakauer, 1996:44
The quotation above are one reason of Chris Idealism come from, Another proof from his selfish idealism can also be seen from his dialogue between Chris and
Mr. Franz, it is shown in “Into The Wild” page 51:
After attending the church that Sunday, Franz decided to talk to Alex “About how he was living. Somebody
needed to convince him to get an education and a job and make something of his life”.
When he returned to McCandless’s camp and launched into the self-improvement pitch, though, McCandless cut
him off abruptly.”Look, Mr. Franz,” he declared, “you don’t need to worry about me. I have a college education.
I’m not destitute. I’m living like this by choice.” And
31
then, despite his initial prickliness, the young man warmed to the old-timer, and the two enganged in a long
conversation. Krakauer, 1996:51
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it
all around us. It is in everything we might experience. We just have to have the courager to turn against our
habitual lifestyle and engange in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else
around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you
have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubborness to engage in
new circumstances. Krakauer, 1996:57-58
From the quotations above we can conclude that his idea and morality are so strong, he refuse all the thing that are opposite from what he believes, he lives his life
by his own rule, he answers all the question from people around confidently as his belief is all right and nothing to change, allthough many seems wrong and selfish
from the side of society.
4.3 Conflict
