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It is sometimes said that nothing in life that is worth having comes easily. I have noticed that what often separates those who attain their hopes and dreams from those who do not is that they possess a certain drive and determination to stop at nothing to achieve those dreams. Although the two individuals Chris McCandless and Frederick Douglass lived in different time periods, and grew up in totally different environments, they possessed the will to overcome whatever obstacles life presented them and achieved the goals that they set for themselves. Chris McCandless was determined to live an unconventional, nomadic lifestyle like those of his idols Henry David Thoreau, Boris Pasternak, and the Jules Verne character Captain Nemo. Growing up, he waited until the time was right to begin his journey across the country and into the wilderness. John Krakauer wrote: Five weeks earlier he’d loaded his belongings into his car and headed west without an itinerary. The trip was to be an odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. He had spent the previous four years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college. At long last he was