Chris McCandless reflects on the youthful innocence of his parents before their marriage and the subsequent years of domestic trauma. He expresses a desperate, impossible desire to warn them of the pain they will cause each other and their children, ultimately choosing to distance himself from their legacy in order to survive.
CHRIS: I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open
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