Chris McCandless from Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and Huckleberry Finn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain were two individuals from different periods of time that had completely different lifestyles, yet their personality and habits, as well as relationship with family was similar in quite a few ways. Huck was a crabby 13 year old orphan from the civil war time that ran away from his father and helped Jim, a negro, escape from slavery. Chris was a 20 year old adventurer who adopted a false name of Alexander Supertramp for himself and hiked into Alaskan wilderness in April 1992 with little food and equipment. These two characters might be from different periods of time, and might not be of the same age but they certainly do have some things in common.
Huck Finn wasn’t from a perfect family. He was from Missouri and adopted by Widow Douglas and later taken away from her by his vagrant and drunkard father Pap Finn. Pap’s only way of parenting Huck was physically abusing him. He sometimes even made it seem like he was jealous of Huck’s life. Huck slept in a different place every night depending on the weather and lived off of what others gave him. He didn’t have a mom or siblings, where on the other hand Chris McCandless did.
Chris McCandless was from the suburbs of Washington D.C. He left his family to free himself from them and his peers, and traveled the country in his yellow Datsun. When he was out on the road he barely had any money and food. At this time he lived off of what other people had to offer him just like Huck. Chris wasn’t from a poor family and had an education. His father, Walter McCandless, was employed as an antenna specialist for NASA and his mom Billie worked as a secretary at Hughes Aircraft and later assisted her husband with his home based consulting company. Chris just like Huck didn’t get along with his dad because of what he found out when they took a family trip down to California in 1986. He also didn’t like his mom. The only person he truly loved was his sister Carine. She wasn’t his only sibling, besides her he had 6 other half siblings from Walt’s first marriage.
Chris was a very intelligent young man, but his personality has changed a lot since he left his hometown. He became a loner and tried finding connection with nature, which a lot of people don’t do, as well as selfish and independent. Chris also didn’t care about what others had to say about him, he did whatever he wanted, and money meant nothing to him. After college he donated his remaining money to a charity. When he worked at McDonalds in Colorado early in October 1991, he burned away and threw away all the money that he earned.
Huckleberry’s personality differed a little from Chris’s. Huck was kind and loyal, but at times he was stubborn. He had no manners and always felt the need to lie to others and himself. One thing that Huck had in common with Chris was that they both weren’t caring. Huck was never bothered by anything, he would always let things go, and he didn’t care about money that much either. Yes he had money, but he didn’t care about it just like Chris.


To conclude, these two characters had different lifestyles, yet their personalities, habits and relationship with family and other people that surrounded them were alike. They both liked adventures. Both got into trouble a lot and didn’t get along with parents. Both had money and finally they both didn’t care about it.