"At one point Franz dared to make a special request of McCandless. "My mother was an only child," he explains. "So was my father. And I was their only child. Now that my own boy's dead, I'm the end of the line. When I'm gone, my family will be finished, gone forever. So I asked Alex if I could adopt him, if he would be my grandson." McCandless, uncomfortable with the request, dodged the question: "We'll talk about it when I get back from Alaska, Ron." (Krakauer 55)
Topic: The Dynamics of Family
After this conversation between Franz and Alex we can see more clearly that Alex had a pretty rough past with his own family. Alex seems to not want any type of long lasting friendships or any type of close relationships with anyone to the point where they could possibly start considering him as family because he probably feels that he will end up ruining it somehow or they will start acting different towards him and start acting less like a friend. The whole point of this whole trip of his was to escape and free himself from personal ties to civilization and he felt that Franz' request would go against the reason of why he left and his beliefs of family and social construct. Alex constantly runs into people during his trip that he ends up creating friendly bonds with but after a week or so he withdraws himself from their lives and continues on his journey into the wild.
No comments:
Post a Comment