I grew up studying with a Christian Homeschooling Co-op. It was great. Classes were small, the kids were nice, and the subjects were unique and interesting. Stuff you wouldn’t ordinarily learn in a public school, like Greek, state history, personal finance, and the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. But the class I always looked forward to most was this Great Battles for Boys class. The focus was different every year: the Civil War, World War 2, Ancient wars. I enjoyed these classes because the teacher brought history to life. He would bring in Civil War-era bayonets and pass them around, telling us which way to rub our fingers across the blade so as not to cut ourselves. And every week he would wheel in the box television to show us scenes from his favorite war movies. But what I remember most about that class was what we did right after the bell. Stand up, say the pledge of allegiance, and then repeat three words that summarized all the lectures the teacher gave: Freedom isn’t free.
These three words are carved in granite on the Korean War memorial in Washington D. C. As it turns out the popular saying in economics, There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TNSTAAFL) is true on a more granular level as well. There’s no such thing as free freedom. Everything has a price.
To look at what it means to be free, especially in the coming-of-age sense, I want to look at a film that shows how what we’re escaping from and what we’re looking for might be more similar than we think. So let’s look at Into the Wild (2007).
Before I say anything else, go ahead and watch the film’s ending scene.
A More Attractive Fiction
Into the Wild’s Christopher McCandless sets out to define himself and the world around him by living alone in Alaska. This ending scene is his revelation that who he is as a person has a much greater basis in what he’s been given than what he can give to himself.
I should mention here that Into the Wild is a true story. The film is based on the book by Jon Krakauer. The internet has made much of either accusing or defending Chris for his seemingly irrational decision to hike into Alaska without so much as a map. I’m not looking to do either here. His story, though admittedly tragic, is more about the why than the what.
Examining Chris’s motivations is a good way of understanding freedom. People throw around the word so frequently to fit so many situations, the term has become quite convoluted. But I think the easiest way to look at it is freedom from something for something else.
So in Chris’s case, freedom from society for truth.
When we think of freedom, we often think of freedom from something. At surface level, Christopher McCandless wants freedom from the material world. He just graduated from Emory University, a straight-A student, and he’s got his whole life ahead of him. Only Chris thinks “careers are a twentieth-century invention.” When his parents offer to buy him a new car as a graduation present, he tells them he doesn’t want anything.
He paraphrases Thoreau early in the film: “Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth.”
That’s essentially what the movie is, it’s a search for truth. Who is the true me? How can I be my truest self? For Chris, the answer is changing his name to Alexander Supertramp, burning his money, snapping his credit cards, ditching his car, and going to Alaska.
If this sounds like an escapist’s dream, that’s because it is. And like most stories of escapism, the root cause is pain.
You could say Chris has been in a state of crisis since early childhood. His parents were not happily married. All his life Chris had been told they met in college, fell in love, and married after graduation. They started a business together, grew rich together. Appearances mattered. “What will the neighbors think?” was his mother’s refrain.
But this turned out to be a lie. Chris found out from family friends that his father had already been married when he met Chris’s mother. In other words, Chris and his sister were bastard children. As it says in the film, this revelation made his entire life seem like fiction.
Like Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight, Chris is ready to give up on people. “I don’t understand why every f-ing person is so bad to each other so f-ing often.” The pain Chris feels as a result of his parents’ lie has awakened his senses to the full gamut of human failings. By abandoning the material world, Chris believes he can deliver himself from inauthenticity. So he changes his name to Alex Supertramp and thus creates a more attractive fiction.
Dying To Self
The ending scene shows a dying Chris. He’s emaciated, starving from the result of eating a poisonous plant. Alaska, Chris’s place of deliverance, is killing him slowly. The cost of “ultimate freedom,” of being “lost in the wild” turns out to be his life.
To boil Chris’s journey down to escapism, however, would be an oversimplification. As much as Chris is fleeing from the pain of the world, he is also running towards something else, namely truth. As Alex Supertramp writes in the film’s beginning, “For now, after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.”
Christopher McCandless has to die for Alex Supertramp to live renewed. The words ‘spiritual revolution’ suggest a revivification, a realization of a life removed from the everyday hassle. I think this was the life Chris set out to embrace. As Sean Penn (Into the Wild’s director) said in an interview with Charlie Rose, it’s an example of trying to define yourself from within yourself.
Total Love
For me, the real beauty of Into the Wild isn’t the scenery (though no film has ever made me want to hike in the wilderness more) but the people Chris encounters during his travels. While researching for the film, Penn talked to the real-life people who interacted with Chris. Penn said there was a sense of ‘fresh loss’ when they talked about him years later. That’s how much Chris had affected complete strangers. His vibrancy, his charisma, his passion for his dreams–they impacted people. It’s no surprise, too. Chris’s wanderlust is one we all share to some degree. We’ve all thought at one time or another what Eddie Vedder sings in the movie: “Society . . . you’re a crazy breed.” However, there’s society, and then there’s community. Chris ignores the latter along with the former. He never allows the people he meets to get in the way of the ultimate freedom that awaits him in Alaska.
My favorite scene in the movie is between Chris and an eighty-two-year-old man whom he befriends while in the southwest. Take a look.
You can see how much Ron is touched by Chris’s encouragement. Later on, in a heartbreaking scene, Ron proposes that he adopt Chris, since once he dies there won’t be anyone to carry on his name. But Chris doesn’t want to talk about it until after he gets back from Alaska–his one and only goal.
One of Ron’s lines in this scene is key to understanding the ending. He tells Chris, “There’s some kind of bigger thing we can all appreciate and it sounds like you don’t mind calling it God. But when you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines on you.”
Let’s return to the ending scene one last time. There is Chris, dying, looking up at the sky. The sun is barely peeking out of the clouds. He imagines running into his parents’ arms. “Would you see then what I see now?” The clouds part and the sun shines down on Chris’s face. Would you see that love that comes from forgiveness?
With death comes understanding: Call each thing by its right name. He signs off his goodbye note not with Alexander Supertramp but with his given name. As much as he tried to separate himself from the world, to define himself within himself, there are some things the self alone can’t provide. Happiness is one of those things. As Chris famously writes, “Happiness is only real when shared.”
Freedom from society for truth had turned into freedom from hurt for love.
Freedom to Serve
So on a grander scale, what is freedom for? Once liberated from whatever force that’s holding you back, it’s easy to see freedom as what allows you to reach out and grab what you want in life. That’s certainly how Chris used his freedom.
Let’s look at a biblical example, the go-to example when it comes to discussing this topic. The Exodus story. Everyone knows “Let my people go.” It’s been used as a cry for liberation for centuries of oppressed peoples. But the command doesn’t end there. Here’s the verse in its entirety:
“And you shall say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed.”
Exodus 7:16
Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. Freedom from slavery for service to God. I like what Christopher Watkin says in his book Biblical Critical Theory:
“The point of the exodus is not freedom in the sense of self-determination, but service, the service of the loving, redeeming, and delivering God of Israel, rather than the state and its proud king.”
Christopher Watkin
Defining themselves from within themselves is not how God intended the Israelites to use their freedom. But just as we are free to serve God, we are also free to disobey and face the consequences. In the beginning, God gave us the independence to choose Him freely. On the cross, Jesus delivered us from the bondage of sin so that we could worship him as saved people.
Freedom isn’t free. Jesus had to die to save us from our sins. The Christian response to this sacrifice is through sacrifices of our own, laying down earthly pleasures for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Free from sin for worship, Christians should be prepared to give their all in the spreading of the Gospel so that others may be set free.
For me, Chris’s story in Into the Wild is a good reminder of where I should set my priorities. “Rather than love, money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, give me truth.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
Truth is what Leonard Knight says in the movie. “That God really loves us, a lot.” Enough to give us the freedom to either obey or reject Him. Enough to send his own son to pay the price for our sins. Community matters. Family matters. Happiness is only real when shared, and it is but a taste of the glory God is making ready for us in heaven.