How does Krakauer characterise Chris McCandless in the opening chapters of the book? Intelligent, stubborn, congenial, friendly, unhygienic, etc. Provide evidence.

Krakauer presents Mccandless as an intelligent, athletic, intense, idealistic, and likeable, young man.

He’d grown up, I learned, in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C., where he’d excelled academically and had been an elite athlete.

He was an extremely intense young man and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence.

“There was just no talking the guy out of it,” Gallien remembers. “He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldn’t wait to head out there and get started.”