From your first impression everyone is seen in society by the way they look on the outside. The way you get treated might either be a privilege or a curse based on the involuntary factors of which you were born. Your skin color, your gender, your race and social class, they all are preset from the day your born and you have no control over how people react to it and treat you by it. Chris McCandless had a lot of privileges he wasn't aware of that were on his side. Through out the novel, Chris is constantly treated with the advantage of the color of his skin. He was able to cross and reenter the United States border with the slightest of ease. If his skin color was anything other than white he wouldn't have been able to go through his journey with such agility. "Caught by immigration authorities trying to slip into the country without ID, he spent a night in custody before concocting a story that sprang him from the slammer; minus his .38 caliber handgun." If Chris was any other race he definitely wouldnt have been able to just "concoct a story" to get him out of jail. He definitely had the race card on his side. Especially due to the fact that McCandless was carrying the gun especially makes the privileges of being Caucasian or light skinned more prominent. If Chris was an African American, or even a Mexican American trying to reenter the United States border, without ID and carrying an armed weapon they definitely wouldn't have gotten away as easy as McCandless did. Anyone of any other race would have without a doubt gotten interrogated and kept in holding for way longer than McCandless did, but Chris wasn't even aware of the privilege his skin color had on the situation.
Not everyone in life get the chance to continue with their education. Whether it be their choice to go straight into the job field or their obligation to find work to pay bills and support their family, the ability to continue and further your education definitely is an aspect of privilege. It's the factors of whether your family is financially stable enough, supporting enough, or whether or not you can put yourself through school as an independent. Not everyone has this privilege of being able to go to school whether they want to further their education or not, its the matter of who has these privileges of being able to go or not. Chris's family was financially stable enough to put him through a University out of state as most higher class families do. With this privilege of being able to gain knowledge before following his real passion in life instead of blindly following his parent's wishes for him to go to school. And as it usually goes, with privilege comes passion. He had the privilege of going to school and getting formally educated for the sake of getting his parents off of his back, but soon after he was able to leave that lifestyle for one he actually had a desire for, and follow his passion. If he wasn't able to go to college with such ease from his parents financial stability, he would have had to work and put himself through college to fill his parent's wishes. Which is actually the life of most working students in today's age and economic status. Most students spend their whole life going to school living out their parents dreams through them. They go to college because their parents want them to not because they have anything their passionate about in particular to study. In this generation, it's common for parent's to want their children to go to school so they can ultimately find a job that provides them with financial throughout their life. Not encouraging their passions but simply pushing them through the education system to find a cookie cutter job that will satisfy their materialistic needs. Due to the privilege Chris McCandless had with parents who were financially stable, he was able to complete their wants for him while still being to pick up a passion and be able to go forth and follow it though.
In our society today, education is seen as the first step in working towards your career/lifestyle as an adult. The value of an education behind your name is irreplaceable in the business world. There is nothing that can replace the title of having a prestigious degree or school behind your name giving you all the credit that goes along with accomplishing that and earning it's reward as a title in itself. The value of education is everything in today's society. If you don't have an education, the options of getting a well paid job are extremely limited and incomparable to the pay if you were to have some sort of education. With a valuable education ties in with various factors such as race, your class in society, and what kind of privileges come with those factors. A higher class comes a higher income and in that way the education system gets a somewhat of a filter of who is able to complete college and who isn't, creating a sort of inequality in the system. A family with a higher income is more likely to be able to send their offspring to college, thus them getting equally as high of an income when it's their prime in their career. These factors never mattered to Chris McCandless. Throughout his life, he was constantly smothered in these privileges. He came from a well off family, was able to get an education with money left over in his savings and may or may not have been aware of the privileges that came with him being Caucasian as he ventured off in the wild. All these privileges may have led to the death of him. With so many struggles never having to apply to him as a kid, it's possible he never really got to see the world from any other point of view other than "anything is possible". With never having any disabilities in his world around him he may have thought he was invincible to certain matters other people would have to face throughout their lives, feeling as if nothing would be able to hurt him throughout his life. "Chris was fearless even when he was little. He didn't think the odds applied to him. We were always trying to pull him from the edge." Chris came from such a privileged family able to provide him with a great education and he simply just dropped everything that could relate to them completely to do what he wanted. As if the harsh realities of the outside world wouldn't apply to him because he was so coddled with unseen privileges his whole life. If he was any other race he wouldn't have been able to get work on the road as easily, or been given as much sympathy or trust as he was with the strangers he grew to know who picked him up on the road as just a random hitchhiker.
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