On McCandless’s last night in Carthage before departing for Alaska, Westerberg and his friends throw a party, and McCandless winds up playing the piano. Krakauer reports, “to everyone’s surprise, McCandless sat down at the piano, which he’d never mentioned he knew how to play, and started pounding out honky-tonk country tunes, then ragtime, then Tony Bennett numbers. And he wasn’t merely a drunk inflicting his delusions of talent on a captive audience” (68). One of the friends present reports that McCandless, “could really play. I mean he was good” (68). Such scenes connect McCandless back to his childhood home, where both his father and his sister were talented musicians. McCandless’s father played piano for famous jazz musicians during college, and Chris had a rivalry with his sister Carine in the high school band. By depicting McCandless playing the piano at this farewell party, Krakauer suggests that McCandless still shared affinities with his family, despite their emotional distance and lack of contact.

McCandless’s stubbornness is described by Krakauer in Chapter 11: “The only way he cared to tackle a challenge was head-on, right now, applying the full brunt of his extraordinary energy” (111). This willfulness presents itself as a motif as McCandless repeatedly rejects help in the form of gifts or advice.