>>980570>>980626I can actually recommend reading Krakauer's book Into the Wild. It gives you a much more nuanced view on McCandles than the movie does. Krakauer also kills some of the myths that has been going about him and his dead, one of them beeing that he mixed up a caribu for a moose. That one thing was actually because of Gordon Samel and Ken Thompson who insisted that the animal was moose which led many readers of Krakauer’s Outside article to insist that McCandless was ill-prepared and ignorant.
Another thing is the mixing up of plants - which the movie portrays as the cause of his death. The funny thing is that Krakauer in his book (which the movie is loosely based upon) rejects that theory completely. There was a lot of testing done and - as I recall - the latest explanation was that McCandles did know what plant he ate (makes sence since he actually writes about avoiding the toxic, similar-looking ones in his jurnal), but that the plant had a small concentration of a certain toxic in its seeds that was not described in any books at the time, but would in large amounts weaken one severely.
The last thing that I'd ad is that saying that McCandles was unprepared or studpid is a gross simplication that never the less thrives since it's an easy explanation. Again, I can highly recommend reading the book.
