Into the Wild2007

Carine McCandless:
Toward the end of June, Emory had mailed our parents Chris' final grade report. Almost all A's. A in Apartheid in South African Society. A- in Contemporary African Politics and the Food Crisis in Africa. And on it went. Clever boy, my brother. But by the end of July, we hadn't heard anything from him and my parents were becoming unsettled. Chris had never had a phone, so they decided to drive down to Atlanta and surprise him. When they arrived at the apartment, there was a "For Rent" sign up and the manager said that Chris had moved out at the end of May. So when they got home, I had to hand them all the letters that they had sent Chris that summer, which had been returned in a bundle. Chris had arranged for the post office to hold them until August 1st, to buy himself some time. I understood what he was doing. That he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents and material excess, the things that cut Chris off from the truth of his existence.