He expresses discomfort about getting a job and carrying an ID in Los Angeles, and displays listlessness and rebelliousness when flipping burgers at McDonald's in Bull City, but enjoys doing manual labor on Wayne Westerberg's grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota. At the same time, McCandless shows an ambivalent attitude towards work and charity. When crossing the U.S.-Mexican border he is arrested for not carrying an I.D. While traveling with Jan Burres and Bob he is ticketed for hitchhiking. Yet McCandless's rejection of material culture comes into friction with society, eventually becoming so extreme that it is unsustainable. Additionally by hitchhiking across the country, McCandless appears to live his personal philosophy-"that you should own nothing except what you can carry on your back at a dead run"-to the fullest. A fan of Leo Tolstoy, (a great novelist who renounced his wealth and privileged background to lead a simple life among the poor), McCandless's itinerant and impoverished lifestyle is almost mirror-like reflection of the ideals Tolstoy espoused in his works. Underlying McCandless's rejection of money and materialism is his devotion to his ideals, which take shape through the authors and books McCandless reads during his journey. During this time he also burns his leftover cash in a gesture that clearly points to his rejection of capitalistic society. He abandons his yellow Datsun in the Mojave Desert, forgoing the convenience of a car to travel on foot. Chris McCandless's reinvention into " Alexander Supertramp" is marked by his rejection of money and material objects, as well as his quest for a "raw, transcendent experience." McCandless donates the remainder of his college fund, $24,000, to OXFAM, thereby renouncing his affluent upbringing.
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