“How is it,” he wonders aloud as he gazes blankly across Chesapeake Bay, “that a kid with so much compassion could cause his parents so much pain?”
Walt McCandless in reference to his son, Chris. 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 what 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.
John Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996)
